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Sept. 25, 2024 - System Update - Glenn Greenwald
53:31
Brazil and E.U. Force X and Telegram To Censor & Spy; Who Sent More Troops To The Middle East?; CNN Fabricates Antisemitism Quote

TIMESTAMPS:  Intro (0:00) Free Speech Billionaires Capitulate (6:46) Who Is In Charge? (34:58) Outro (51:46) - - - Watch full episodes on Rumble, streamed LIVE 7pm ET. Become part of our Locals community - - -  Follow Glenn: Twitter Instagram Follow System Update:  Twitter Instagram TikTok Facebook LinkedIn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Good evening, it's Tuesday, September 24th.
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.
Two very powerful multi-billionaires who control social media platforms, exes Elon Musk and Telegram's Pavel Durov, have repeatedly and publicly vowed to resist unjust censorship orders from various governments and to do everything possible to protect the private data of their users from governments demanding that data.
Both have demonstrated a genuine willingness to do that, even if it means provoking conflicts and battles with powerful state officials.
But in the last several weeks, Various governments that are absolutely determined to re-seize control over the flow of speech and the internet have resorted to very extreme measures to force those two platforms and the owners in particular to capitulate, to reverse course, and instead to promise to obey censorship and surveillance orders in the future.
Several weeks ago, as we amply reported, the French government lured Pavel Durov to Paris and then promptly arrested him, accusing him of being guilty of multiple felonies that were committed not by he or his company, But by anonymous users using his platform to commit those crimes.
Yesterday, Durab, who is still detained in France, still prohibited from leaving that country, announced a radical change in his company's long-standing policy by announcing that, in the future, Telegram will significantly increase content moderation, meaning censorship, and will promptly turn over data to EU states regarding Telegram's users to any of those EU states who demand it.
Meanwhile in Brazil, that country's authoritarian Supreme Court justice ordered acts banished from the entire country as a result of Musk's refusal to censor the long list of accounts that judge ordered banned.
A list that included accounts of members of Brazil's Congress who were democratically elected by the country's population, including some with the highest vote totals of anyone in the country.
With the stroke of a pen, this judge ordered acts on other platforms to censor those people.
Yet over the last week, X has begun taking all the required steps to regain entry in Brazil, to once again be allowed to be in Brazil, including banning all of those accounts that the judge ordered banished, as well as pledging future obedience to all forthcoming judicial orders.
All of this raises some valid questions about state sovereignty, just like the US's decision to ban or force a sale of TikTok does, but more so it illustrates the rapidly escalating regime of censorship Being imposed for real on online speech, expression, activism and journalism, and the increasingly severe weapons being used by these states to ensure that that control continues to be consolidated in their hands.
Then, as usually happens whenever Israel has a new war, the United States this week announced its intent to deploy even more American military assets and American soldiers to the region in order to protect Israel and deter escalation.
Now, whether you agree with that decision or not, It is obviously among the most consequential acts a government can embrace, namely to expose the United States to direct combat in a new war.
We're supposed to have a Congress that approves that, but that practice has been long ago left behind, so now the executive branch and the president make those decisions.
Beyond the needed debate over the substantive question of whether American soldiers should be risking their lives to defend Israel in its new wars, there's a real question provoked by these actions beyond the substance, namely, Who exactly is running the White House, the executive branch of the United States, and who specifically is making these decisions about war and peace and about the deployment of American troops to the region?
Given the obvious mental impairment of Joe Biden, something people all admitted after the debate, as well as the expected all-consuming focus of the Vice President on winning the election in order to replace him, these decisions are clearly not coming from either of those two elected officials, who then is making those decisions.
It's remarkable how rarely that question is asked.
And then finally, various CNN personalities over the last several days have utterly manufactured, from whole cloth, just manufactured an anti-Semitism crisis scandal by fabricating a quote and then deceitfully attributing it to Congresswoman Rashida to leave Michigan and then demanding that various officials respond to that false quote.
Now leave aside whatever you might think of Congresswoman Tlaib, their CNN personality should not be fabricating fake quotes and then demanding that politicians respond to it in order to continue their fabricated story.
Now all of this is part of the broader campaign, as we have examined many times, to invent a narrative that the United States faces some sort of new anti-Semitism epidemic.
And that American Jews, of all people, are uniquely endangered and marginalized.
We'll show you what CNN did and how it is illustrative of this broader fraudulent narrative.
In the likely event that we don't have time to cover this segment tonight, just because there's so much other news to talk about and topics to delve into in depth, in the likely event that we run out of time, we will put that segment on our Locals After Show for our Locals members.
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There are legitimate questions, valid, legitimate questions, in the abstract at least, when it comes to the struggle, the power struggle between who ought to be able to govern the Internet.
Should it be extremely powerful private actors who are largely multi-billionaires who buy social media platforms and then can make their own decisions free of any laws or any state acts operating in people's other countries without having to be subject to their laws and orders?
Or should it be the government?
That gets to control the flow of free speech and information and ideas and activism and journalism on the internet.
And this conflict that is now taking place is starting to find expression in very extreme ways because, as we will never tire of emphasizing, the overarching paramount goal of the, quote, democratic world, the number one priority has now become to regain control of the flow of information, the number one priority has now become to regain control of the flow of information, to be able to censor speech on command, and to do so on the Internet, the obvious innovation that is becoming the primary means through which humans communicate
That really is the primary goal, the primary objective of pretty much every country in the democratic world, including the United States, the EU, the UK, Canada, Australia, Brazil, and so many others.
And we're seeing this conflict play out in all sorts of ways.
Now you may remember just to underscore the dynamic here.
That shortly before Donald Trump left office, but while he was still the sitting elected president of the United States, multiple social media companies including the pre-Elon Musk Twitter, Facebook, Google, and others all collaborated, conspired to agree that Donald Trump should be banned That his account should be banned on the major social media platforms that we use to communicate.
So the President of the United States was forcibly silenced, at least when it comes to the primary platforms online, not through the acts of any judge or through the acts of any government, but just simply through the decisions, the arbitrary decisions of the billionaire owners and controllers of those platforms.
And at the time, a lot of governments around the world, including ones that were no fans of Donald Trump, vehemently objected And their argument for why it was so dangerous is not because censorship is dangerous.
Many of the countries that objected, such as Germany and France, are very vibrant practitioners of censorship.
What their objection was, was that if there's going to be censorship, it should only come from the state.
It should be through laws implemented democratically by the elected representatives of the people of a country and not through the arbitrary decisions of various billionaires.
Now, in the abstract, It seems like a valid point of view to say if you are a multi-billionaire and you buy a social media platform and you want to operate in our country, you either have to submit to all of our rules and orders or we will ban you from our country.
Pretty much every foreign corporation is subject to those rules and that is the rationale that was invoked by the United States and the Congress and the Biden administration to implement the new law that either bans TikTok from operating in the United States or forces a sale to A different owner, an owner that the U.S.
government will be able to control more directly and more easily.
Their argument was this is a Chinese-owned company.
We don't want it on our territory.
We don't think they're complying with our rules or our laws.
We consider them a threat to our national sovereignty and therefore we're going to ban it.
A lot of people in the United States, including ones who like to wave a free speech banner, applauded that decision and they kept warning that whatever you think of TikTok, That precedent was very dangerous because it meant that states can now dictate to social media companies who must control them, the rules by which they must operate.
And we're now seeing that play out both in Brazil, where Elon Musk originally vowed to resist and to disobey The censorship orders that were flowing day after day from this one single judge only to now reverse course and to tell the Brazilian court that from now on he will obey those censorship orders in order to regain access to Brazil, which by all accounts X is close to doing.
And it also forced A longstanding online privacy activist, Pavel Durov, also a multi-billionaire who was the founder of the Russian equivalent of Facebook, and was so committed to the principle that states shouldn't be able to control social media platforms and shouldn't be able to collect data on their users, that he fled Russia and allowed the Russian government to seize his company.
rather than submit to an unjust censorship regime imposed by the Russian government on him.
That's how committed, for the long term, he has been.
And he created Telegram with his brother in order to provide a heightened level of privacy, a heightened level of resistance against censorship.
And yet, in the last week, Telegram has also reversed course and now announced that they're going to implement the very policies of censorship and state surveillance That they for so long have built their identity on opposing.
And I think how this was done, how Elon Musk and X was forced to back down in Brazil, and then how Telegram and Pavel Durov was forced to back down in the EU is extremely worth understanding and covering because it all illustrates this very alarming and rapidly unfolding trend where states will go to whatever lengths they have to with no limits at all, including the limits of law.
to ensure that free speech on the internet end because that is the one thing states fear most.
The ruling class elite in the west more more than anything else fears a free and open internet and that is why they're doing everything possible to intimidate even multi-billionaires to submit to their censorship regime and so far it's working.
Now we've covered at length what happened with X and summation This judge has become a complete madman, a complete authoritarian.
And with great regularity, he simply orders people banned from the internet with the stroke of a pen.
There's no procedure.
There's no trial.
There's no due process.
Not even the people who are censored get advised of the order.
Let alone have any mechanism for contesting it.
This judge just has absolute unlimited power of censorship to order anything or anyone removed from the internet.
And all social media platforms are required to comply within two hours or face massive fines in Brazil.
And that was what Elon Musk said.
I refuse to comply.
I'm not going to ban elected members of Congress and prominent journalists and influencers simply based on the say-so of a judge.
With no explanation provided as to what they did wrong.
And he was very adamant that that was going to be a cause that he would adhere to, Elon Musk was.
And as a result, Brazil banned Axe from existing.
In Brazil, most Brazilians cannot access Axe and have not been able to for several weeks since that order was issued.
And then even more alarmingly, on top of it, just to illustrate how far these governments are willing to go, this judge invented a new law That anyone who uses a VPN, which is a instrument to obscure where you're actually located, and typically they're used in order to circumvent the blocks on internet platforms imposed by authoritarian governments.
You can use a VPN if you're inside China, Iran, or Russia, North Korea, Brazil, in order to access information the state's trying to block you from seeing.
He said anyone who uses a VPN in order to access and use Twitter, We'll be fined $10,000 a day.
Basically, that's the equivalent of the fine in reais, which is more.
The daily fine is more than the medium annual salary for Brazilians.
So it's not a joke of a fine.
It's a massive fine.
And Elon Musk called this judge repeatedly a tyrant, even threatened him and said his day is coming where he will be imprisoned.
And yet, one sex was blocked.
And they did things like take money, millions of dollars out of not X's accounts, but Starlink's account, a completely separate company, to pay for the fines this judge imposed on X.
And it started to appear that millions of people in Brazil, Brazil's a huge country, it has a huge user base of internet users, started to migrate to competitors of X, such as Blue Sky and Threads.
And every passing day that went by when X was banned from Brazil, risked having those people go there permanently and never come back, but also was putting a lot of financial harm both on X and on related companies like Starlink, which is part of SpaceX.
Now, as we pointed out before, Rumble was in the same situation.
Rumble was receiving the same mountain of censorship orders that were unjust, and yet Rumble refused to comply.
They announced that we are not going to comply with the censorship regime.
We will not operate in Brazil.
Well, given the dangers of this judge, this madman judge who orders people imprisoned, he threatened to imprison X officials as well as imposed massive fines just like that.
So Rumble to this very day is not available in Brazil because Rumble stood on principle and gave up this very lucrative market for Rumble.
That's what Elon Musk said he was going to do.
As it turns out, for a lot of complicated reasons, I'm sure there's massive pressure on Elon Musk from his investors, his creditors, shareholders, and his other companies to back down.
And that's exactly what he's now doing.
He's now having X jump through all the hoops that the Brazilians are holding up for him in order to get back in Brazil.
Here from the New York Times on September 21st.
Elon Musk's axe backs down in Brazil.
Quote, in an abrupt reversal, the social network's lawyers said it was complying with court orders that it had previously defied.
Brazil's Supreme Court could allow the site to return next week.
This was a Friday article.
So already in Tuesday, there's still no axe in Brazil, even though they're jumping through every hoop.
The article reads, quote, Elon Musk suddenly appears to be giving up.
After defying court orders in Brazil for three weeks, Mr. Musk's social network, X, has capitulated.
In a court filing on Friday night, the company's lawyers said that X had complied with orders from Brazil's Supreme Court in the hopes that the court would lift a block on its site.
Now, X's lawyers said the company had done exactly what Mr. Musk vowed not to do, namely take down accounts that a Brazilian justice ordered removed because the judge said they threatened Brazil's democracy.
X also complied with the justice's other demands, including paying fines and naming a new formal representative in the country, the lawyers said.
Brazil's Supreme Court confirmed X's move in a filing on Saturday, but the company had not filed the proper paperwork.
It gave X five days to send further documentation.
Now, just to highlight what an abrupt, radical reversal this is of everything Elon Musk had been saying for weeks, if not months, About X standing on principle, about preferring to lose access to the Brazilian market rather than submit to the censorship regime.
Here he was on September 5th tweeting Brazilian flag emojis along with the phrase free Brazil and then more flag emojis.
So he really raised the cause of free speech in Brazil, said he was going to lead that effort to free Brazilians from the authoritarian clutches of this judge.
Here's another tweet from him.
That is on April 8th, 9th, a little bit earlier this year, where about this judge he says, how did Alexandre de Moraes become the dictator of Brazil?
He has Lula on a leash.
And then on September 3rd, just three weeks ago, less than three weeks ago, this is what Musk posted, quote, Alexandre de Moraes, the judge, deserves prison for his crimes.
And he even tweeted out Alexander Dimarais saying, we're not going to comply with your unjust orders, and your day is coming where you're going to be in prison.
Republican members of Congress had filed bills to deny Dimarais a visa to enter the United States.
So Elon Musk elevated this to a major, major controversy.
It was the number one story in Brazil, as you might imagine, for at least a full week, if not longer, that X is now banned.
Brazil is one of eight countries now that have banned X, and Egon Musk vowed that he would maintain this on principle.
And yet on Friday, X made clear to the judge that they will do everything they need to do, jump through every hoop, including censoring those very accounts that X had previously vowed never to censor in order to regain access.
It's easy to say, oh, Elon Musk is a sellout or someone who capitulates easily, that he pretends to have a principle but then goes back on it.
But in his defense, I guess, I'm not defending him, I'm just offering the rationale for why he likely has done this, to say that there was pressure put on him from every direction is to severely understate the case.
One of the most extraordinary things this judge did was he imposed fines on X for failing to censor.
But by then X had removed all of his assets and all of its representatives from Brazil based on the threat of this judge that he would arrest X executives and hold them hostage in order to compel X to censor.
And so what this Brazilian judge did is he stole, took, Not from the bank accounts of Axe, but the bank accounts of a completely different company, Starlink, which operates in Brazil and which has been heralded by Brazilian officials for providing free internet access to numerous populations in Brazil that would otherwise not have access to the internet.
He just ordered $3.3 million withdrawn from Starlink's account.
Here you see the Associated Press on September 13th.
Brazil judge withdraws $3.3 million from Starlink.
to pay for social media fines.
Quote, a Brazilian Supreme Court justice on Friday seized about $3 million from bank accounts belonging to social media platform X and satellite-based internet provider Starlink, both companies controlled by tech billionaire Elon Musk.
The move by Justice Alexandre de Marais was aimed at collecting funds that are equivalent to the amount that X owes to the country in fines.
The bank accounts of the two companies have since been unfrozen.
Legal analysts have questioned The judge's prior decision to freeze Starlink's bank account to pay for cases related to X, while Musk owns both X and SpaceX, which operates Starlink, the two companies are separate entities.
So just to remind you of this situation, SpaceX is a company that has shareholders in it.
Even though Elon Musk is the majority shareholder, at least controls the operations of SpaceX, there are individuals that have nothing to do with Twitter or X who are shareholders, major shareholders in SpaceX and Starlink.
And what they're obviously saying is, we don't want countries stealing money from our bank account or banning us in a country because of your crusade about free speech on Twitter.
And undoubtedly he's being aggressively pressured by people on whom he relies to get back into the Brazilian market and to keep Starlink in Brazil.
Again, Brazil is a massive country.
It's the sixth most populous country on the planet.
It's a country of 220 million people.
And their online population is even larger.
It's been the sixth biggest economy in the world.
I believe now it's the ninth or tenth.
We're talking about a major, major country.
And for, obviously, a country, a company like SpaceX, being able to operate in Brazil is a very important part of their profit model and the price of their shareholders.
Now, at the very same time, remember that Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion.
And even Musk now admits that the value of the company is at least half that, probably closer to a third.
In part because of these free speech decisions that have driven away corporate advertisers.
And there are a lot of banks, big financial institutions like JP Morgan and Citigroup and others that made loans in order to finance and enable this purchase of X by Elon Musk that are in for billions and billions of dollars.
And the last thing they want to see is X being kicked out of major lucrative markets By standing on a principle that these financial institutions could not care any less about, which is the cause of free speech online.
And so I'm sure he's getting it from every direction.
Elon Musk is.
And he's, although the richest person on Earth, also dependent upon a lot of creditors and shareholders.
Now, this, I think, the bigger story here is not, did Elon Musk act in a way that should be criticized?
Again, Rumble faced the same position and stood by its principles.
So you can criticize Elon Musk, I think.
But the bigger story is the lengths to which these governments are going in order to seize control of the Internet, to force these social media companies to censor on command, meaning that the government will now control fully the flow of free speech and information online by meaning that the government will now control fully the flow of free speech and information online by putting a gun to the heads of the people who control and own these platforms, threatening to arrest them, as in the case of Brazil, withdrawing millions of dollars from the bank account of related companies, and in the case of France withdrawing millions of dollars from the bank account of related companies, and in the case
When France does something like that, every other billionaire in control of social media platforms, believe me, takes note.
They want to be able to travel the world.
They don't want to be forced to avoid Europe or Brazil or Canada or the UK.
And so that is a big threat to them if you start putting a gun to their head saying, we won't prison you if you don't censor on our command.
And when they put Pavel Durov in prison by luring him to France and arresting him the minute he offered his private blame, that was something that every billionaire lost sleep over who owns a social media company.
Here from the Financial Times, just to give you a little bit of historical perspective, February 22nd, The Indian government has often demanded that dissidents and opposition politicians be banned from acts, including right before elections.
And here you see the title, ex-protest against Indian government censorship orders.
Elon Musk's platform was forced to take down accounts and post on threat of fines and imprisonment.
Quote, the Indian government has issued executive orders requiring acts to act on specific accounts and posts, including subjecting them to potential penalties, including significant fines and imprisonment, Must Platform said.
Quote, in compliance with the orders, we will withhold these accounts and posts in India alone.
However, we disagree with these actions and maintain that freedom of expression should extend to these posts.
X gave no details of how many accounts it had taken down, but said it had provided effective users with notice of its actions and that a legal action previously filed that challenged the Indian government's blocking order quote remained pending.
Obviously, in authoritarian countries, including now in the democratic world, You have all the ruling class in Congress and the executive branch and in the courts united in defense of their ability to control the internet because I said a free internet is something that they cannot possibly tolerate.
Now the situation in The EU, with regard to Pavel Durov, is in some sense even more extreme, particularly because although Musk's acquisition of X is fairly recent, and they have submitted to censorship orders in the past, Telegram has a long history.
It was founded in 2013, just a couple months after the Snowden reporting began, of just simply refusing to even answer censorship orders or demands from states to turn over Private information about its users.
Pavel Durov basically became stateless.
He sort of lives in Dubai, but he travels around the world on yachts and planes.
It's very hard to get to him, or at least it was.
And that has been in the DNA, not just of Telegram for more than a decade, but of the Durov brothers for even longer.
That they will refuse to turn over to states the power to censor their platforms or to learn the identity of users who are on it.
And all that changed once President Macron lured and enticed Pavel Durov to come to France based on an invitation to have lunch or dinner, only to get off the plane and immediately be arrested and then confronted with, indicted for, numerous felonies that we've covered in the past based on the theory that a social media platform's owner is responsible, legally, criminally, for the criminal acts undertaken by people who use that platform.
And so, putting a gun to Telegram's head, to Pavlov's head, putting him in a prison cell for a while, letting him out, but still with the proviso that he not leave France, that he has to check in with the French police twice a week.
Very predictably forced a radical change in Telegram's policy.
From Newsweek today, quote, Telegram agrees to share user data for criminal investigations.
Quote, in a statement made on the Telegram app, Durov said that, quote, we've made it clear that the IP address and phone numbers of those who violate our rules can be disclosed to relevant authorities in response to valid legal requests.
He then said that a, quote, dedicated team of moderators leveraging AI has made Telegram search much safer.
He added that all the problematic content we identified in search is no longer accessible and said that anything unsafe or illegal found in Telegram search can now be reported via, quote, at search report on the app.
These measures, he said, should discourage criminals.
Telegram search is meant for finding friends and discovering news, not for promoting illegal goods.
We just won't let bad actors jeopardize the integrity of our platform for almost a billion users.
Now, if you know anything about Pavel Durov and the history of Telegram, you would only hear that as a kind of hostage statement, which is basically what it is.
And of course, the idea, as we've said before, is to justify the censorship regime by saying, oh, we're trying to catch terrorists and pedophiles, when in reality, of course, in the EU, it is illegal to publish ideas and viewpoints and information That these EU governments decree to be disinformation, decree to be false, which of course includes criticism of them and their policies.
And that's really what this is about, is scaring Pavel Durov and other social media executives as much as possible with the prison cell and threat of felony convictions that could put them in prison for years unless they immediately comply.
And in a statement, that's exactly what Telegram did.
Just to remind you what was done, from Le Monde, the Paris-based French newspaper, on August 29th, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, charged but released under judicial supervision, quote, the co-founder of the messaging platform, was arrested on Saturday evening near Paris, a month and a half after the start of a judicial investigation into 12 charges, most of them relating to organized crime.
He is not allowed to leave France.
His arrest in France on the evening of Saturday, August 24, set off shockwaves.
After more than 80 hours in police custody, Telegram's messaging boss, Pavel Durov, was formally placed under investigation on Wednesday, August 28, for all 12 offenses listed in the introductory indictment, including, quote, complicity in managing an online platform to allow illicit transactions by an organized group.
Also quote the charge, refusal to communicate at the request of the authorized authorities, the information or documents required to carry out and operate the interceptions authorized by law, complicity in organized gang.
In other words, we've talked about this before, we covered it at length.
The charges basically amount to accusing him of being in a conspiracy.
with whoever acts criminally in the eyes of the EU government on his platform, and that all does include child pornography and pedophilia and terrorism, but it also includes spreading disinformation.
Now, as I said, you can criticize Pavel Durov as you can criticize Elon Musk.
You can say, look, if he really believes in the cause he said he believed in, he should be willing to go to prison for decades.
And that is something people have done.
When I worked with Edward Snowden, he made very clear we thought it was 98% likely that he was going to end up in the custody of the United States within a few weeks after meeting us in Hong Kong and turning over that archive.
And he was very clear that he was willing to do that.
He, by a stroke of sheer luck, many strokes of sheer luck, he ended up not in the custody of the United States, but he's been exiled in Russia ever since.
And he gave up a lot of his liberty knowingly in defense of a free internet.
Julian Assange has done the same thing.
And they should be considered heroic for it, but it's hard to say that everybody should be willing to sacrifice in the same way.
I mean, it's very easy if you're not the one in a French prison cell to say, oh, Pavel Durov should refuse to cooperate.
And it's very easy if you're not Elon Musk and it's not your accounts.
Out of which millions of dollars are being taken, that your executives are being threatened with prison, that there could be Interpol orders for your arrest, that it may restrict your ability to travel, that you may lose access to a major market and threaten the financial viability of your company.
As I said, there are companies that have done that.
The main one being Rumble.
So I think you can criticize Elon Musk.
I think you can criticize Pavel Durov.
If anybody is going to resist a censorship regime, I guess it should be multibillionaires.
That's the whole reason to have and to chase billions of dollars is so that you can wield power in a way that you believe is a positive for the world.
And certainly preserving free speech on the internet is that.
But to me, the much more important story is look at how far these governments are going now.
Way beyond what the law allows.
France just invented a criminal theory.
It would be like putting AT&T executives in prison because someone uses their telephone service to plan an illegal act, a drug sale, or a robbery of a convenience store.
Oh, you allowed people on your platform to use your service to plan a crime, and now you, AT&T's executives and shareholders, are criminally liable for that crime.
That's an insane, radical distortion of the law, but these governments don't care because they regard a free internet as an existential threat to their ability to remain in power, and that's exactly what it is.
And that is why, if forced to pick the most important battle of the current generation, I would say preserving a free internet is
If not the very top, certainly one of the two or three most important causes, because without that we will live in a system of closed, homogenized information, where the only information we can be exposed to, the only information or ideas that we can express, is information that these governments, now using very extreme weapons to control the internet, have approved of.
And once we fall into that trap, Where the entire internet has been controlled fully, not partially as it is now, but fully by governments around the world, by ruling class power centers.
The one weapon that exists to dissent from them, to work against them, to organize in opposition to them, will be completely destroyed.
And that is absolutely the path that we're on.
And the cases of Brazil and the EU with Telegram and X absolutely reflect that.
There is no decision more consequential to a country than the decision to involve its military and its soldiers in a new war.
The American founders certainly understood that better than anybody because they actually made the decision to fight and wage a war against the then most powerful entity on the planet, which was the British crown.
And that became the founding of the United States.
But they also understood that war is extremely horrific, even if you end up securing your objective.
And they knew that it would sometimes, probably in the future, be necessary for the United States to enter into wars.
But George Washington and his farewell address, we talk a lot about Dwight Eisenhower's farewell address in 1961 because he warned of the military-industrial complex.
George Washington's farewell address deserves a lot of attention.
We've covered it a little bit on this show, but I really encourage you, if you have some time, 10, 15 minutes, just Google it and read it.
One of the things he warns about most is what he called enduring, durable enemies and enduring, durable alliances.
That we should never have such close alliances with other countries that we take on their wars and their enemies as our own.
Nor should we have enemies that last for years or decades or generations because that will force us into wars all around the world.
That was his warning.
George Washington after being president for eight years, the first American president.
And of course, the way the constitution was designed, it was to make it extremely difficult for the United States to enter new wars because the Congress had to declare war.
Only the Congress could do that because the theory was that if you're going to send American citizens into combat, into a war, Their representatives, the ones closest to them, the ones that represent their districts, that are in greatest proximity to them, should have to vote in favor of that so that American citizens decide whether or not the United States enters new wars and risks the lives of its soldiers to do so.
And if you look at all of the wars that the United States has fought over the last many decades, there have been no cases where Congress has declared war.
The Constitution is just absolutely ignored.
The President has basically the unfettered right To start wars whenever they want.
In fact, the Bush administration made very clear that even when it comes to a major invasion of a sovereign country, such as the invasion of Iraq, the Bush-Cheney theory was that they had the absolute right to do so.
They didn't need Congress.
And Congress begged and pleaded to be allowed to vote on it.
And only once Congress made clear that the outcome was inevitable, that they would vote yes, only then did Bush and Cheney allow them to vote on it, and it wasn't even a declaration of war, it was just the authorization to use military force.
But in general, these decisions are made by the executive branch.
In fact, just as a reminder, Barack Obama joined the regime change war in Libya.
Not only in the absence of a declaration of war or approval from Congress, the House of Representatives was controlled by the Republicans at the time, and they voted on whether to authorize the use of military force in Libya, and they voted no.
And Obama ignored it and proceeded to prosecute that war anyway.
Same with the war in Syria where there was no authorization.
Involved in the war in Ukraine has had approval in the sense of allocating funds.
But a lot of our involvement has gone way beyond the allocation of funds.
There's been no congressional authorization on that.
So basically you have the power centralized in the hands of the White House, the President and Vice President to make these decisions.
And the United States is getting increasingly involved in wars.
Over the last month, multiple decisions were made to deploy more and more U.S.
troops to the Middle East, where many are already deployed, in order to guard against and then, if it happens, defend Israel in any kind of escalation between itself and Lebanon or any attempts by Iran to get involved.
United States troops are deployed there in order to get involved in that war should the
Necessity in the view of the White House arise and the question of course is who is making these decisions who decided specifically which person To send these troops to the Middle East for that reason to involve the United States in a new war obviously was not Joe Biden Given the consensus of everybody after that debate and even well before it that he's mentally unfit to process complex information let alone make major decisions about war and peace and life and death and
And it's obviously not Kamala Harris who wakes up every day with one goal in mind, and that is to work on her campaign to become president.
She's not making decisions either about that.
So who is?
Who inside our government, which unelected official, is making these massively consequential decisions?
Joe Biden spoke today at the UN, and he didn't really address any of these issues, but this is part of what he said.
I made the preservation of democracy the central cause of my presidency.
This summer, I faced a decision whether to seek a second term as president.
It was a difficult decision.
Being president has been the honor of my life.
There's so much more I want to get done.
As much as I love the job, I love my country more.
I decided after 50 years of public service, it's time for a new generation of leadership to take my nation forward.
My fellow leaders, let us never forget, some things are more important than staying in power.
It's your people.
I'd really like to know where that applause came from.
I can assure you it didn't come from the entire world.
And obviously that version of events is a complete fiction, a very self-serving fiction.
Joe Biden didn't decide to leave power.
He was forced by Democratic elites operating in the dark to do so.
He didn't want to leave the race.
And Nancy Pelosi and others threatened him and said, you either leave voluntarily Or we will increase the weapons we use against you, even threatening or alluding to the possibility of the 25th Amendment.
They would have humiliated him.
They were leaking every day.
They were getting the faucet turned off about billionaire donors.
They were putting pressure on him in every single way.
He made very clear he did not want to leave the race, but the reality is that he became mentally incapacitated.
Now, the real reality is that the country has known for two or three years That he was mentally unfit.
Every single poll showed that.
That he was too old to do the job.
The only ones who were pretending otherwise were Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party, and their allies in the media.
But after that debate, it became unsustainable to pretend any longer.
But the reason Joe Biden was forced out is not because he's mentally unfit to do the job.
They were perfectly fine aligning behind Joe Biden, knowing that he was mentally unfit.
In fact, they didn't even allow a primary challenge to him.
Knowing that he couldn't withstand the basic rigors of a primary challenge.
The reason they forced him out of the race had nothing to do with his unfitness to be in office.
It had everything to do with the fact that polls showed he was going to get destroyed.
And that's why they forced him out of the race.
But this is the kind of thing that he's able to speak on himself and give these self-serving tributes to his own self-sacrifice in order to defend the interests of the country.
But the reality is that even though he's still technically the president, everyone knows that he cannot make decisions.
Just as a reminder for what was in the air when they were trying to force him out of the race from the New York Times July 19th, secluded in Rehoboth Beach in Delaware, Biden stews at his allies' pressure to drop out of the race.
Quote, as he recovers from COVID, remember he on top of everything?
He got COVID?
That's just, he was just a mountain of disease and disability.
As he recovers from COVID, the president has grown resentful toward Democratic congressional leaders and former President Barack Obama.
Mr. Biden has been around politics long enough to assume that the leaks appearing in the media in recent days are being coordinated to raise the pressure on him to step aside, according to people close to him.
He considers Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former House Speaker, the main instigator, but is also irritated at Mr. Obama as well, seeing him as a puppet master behind the scenes.
The friction between the sitting president and leaders of his own party so close to an election is unlike anything seen in Washington in generations, especially because the Democrats now working to ease him out were some of the allies most critical to his success over the last dozen years.
They were also the people most likely lying to the public about his capabilities.
Now, just think about that.
It was only three months ago, back in July.
Actually, just two months ago.
That there was an open discussion reported on the front page of the New York Times based on very well-sourced stories coming from Biden's inner circle that he didn't want to leave the race.
He wanted to run for re-election.
That's what he's been planning on doing for two years now, at least.
And that he was being forced out of the race and was hateful and resentful toward the people doing it.
And now there's this narrative that's completely fictitious that everybody embraces in the Democratic Party.
It comes out of Joe Biden's mouth at the UN.
Western European allies clap for it.
The media endorses it, that he's some sort of historically self-sacrificing leader who let go of the reins of power voluntarily because he knew that the interest of his country demanded it.
He wants to place his country over power.
But of course, the idea is clear that Joe Biden has no capabilities of making any decisions of any kind.
Now, despite that, here's the Associated Press headline from yesterday that obviously should be raising Just 24-hour coverage of questions about who is doing this.
Quote, the United States is sending more troops to the Middle East as violence rises between Israel and Hezbollah.
Quote, the U.S.
is sending a small number of additional troops to the Middle East in response to a sharp spike in violence between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon that has raised the risk of a greater regional war, the Pentagon said Monday.
Pentagon Press Secretary Major General Pat Ryder would provide no details on how many additional forces or what they would be tasked to do.
The U.S.
currently has about 40,000 troops in the region in light of increased tension in the Middle East, he said.
And out of an abundance of caution, we are sending a small number of additional U.S.
military personnel forward to augment our forces that are already in the region.
Quote, but for operational security reasons, I'm not going to comment on or provide any specifics.
So you send out the press secretary of the Pentagon to announce this very consequential decision.
There's been a series of buildups over the last two, three months, specifically with the intention of protecting Israel and deterring any attacks on it.
And Joe Biden doesn't speak on this.
Kamala Harris doesn't speak on this.
It's clearly not decisions that are coming from them.
So who is making these decisions to deploy more US troops in that region?
Which specific figures?
If it goes wrong, who do we blame?
Who's to be held accountable?
How do we know with what motives or with what interest they're at and with what motives or in what interest they're acting if we don't know who they are?
What kind of democracy do we have that these most consequential decisions are made by unelected people buried somewhere in the executive branch because everybody knows we have no functional president?
The vice president only cares about the election in which he's involved.
Back in 2023, a year and a half ago, April of 2023, just to show you how long this has been going on, the New York Post published an article with the headline, Biden's 30-hour workweek, how president's age has cut down his schedule.
Quote, even White House staffers admit that President Biden's advanced age is affecting his workload.
Days after the 80-year-old formally announced that he would run for re-election in 2024, Axios reported Friday that aides say it's tough to schedule, quote, public or private events with Biden at certain times of the day, namely weekends, mornings, and evenings.
So in 2023, he was only functional in some afternoons.
That was it.
Quote, in fact, the report adds most of Biden's public events happened between 10 a.m.
and 4 p.m.
That works out to a 30-hour workweek, even less than the official 35-hour workweek in France.
And we all saw event after event.
Remember, he went to Europe and was clearly disoriented and confused about where he was and what he was doing.
And then he showed up at that fundraiser event with Obama and had to be Delicately guided off the stage by Obama who clearly knew what he was doing when he created that image.
And then anybody who observed that, hey look Biden's with these European leaders and he just wanders off like a young child or an Alzheimer patient.
Just like wanders off and you know like Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau had to whisper to Georgia Maloney, hey keep an eye on Joe, he seemed to be wandering off and she had to go over and delicately guide him back.
Remember anybody who observed that was accused by the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN of spreading right-wing disinformation and it all switched on a dime.
The minute they needed to get Biden out of the race, they were like, yeah, actually, you know what?
We called this disinformation, vicious right-wing disinformation, just about two weeks ago, but now we need to affirm this for our own interest.
And so now we're going to say that clearly this is a person incapable of doing the job.
In June of this year, as Politico reported, Joe Biden escorted Joe Biden off the stage after the first presidential debate.
And you may recall that was when she said to him, Oh, Joe, congratulations.
You answered every question the way you talk to a four year old trying to encourage him or again, some kind of dementia patient in a nursing home.
I go, wow, you ate all your jello.
That's so good.
People, when they get to that age and that level of mental incapacity, revert back to infancy, which is why you see people with disabilities of that kind being treated like young children.
That's exactly what we've seen Joe Biden repeatedly.
Now there was an article, a video circulating in the last few days, and I believe we have it, yeah we do, of Joe Biden held his first cabinet meeting in a very long time.
And instead of presiding over it, here's what he did instead.
I'm grateful that Jill is here today.
I heard that clapping.
It wasn't for me.
And here across the previous administration, First Ladies have attended these meetings for specific reasons.
This is the first time Jill has joined us, and it goes to show how important the issue is which she's about to speak to the both of us.
Today at the top of our meeting, Jill's going to give an update on the White House initiative to fundamentally change the approach and how we approach and fund women's health services.
So I'd like to turn it over to Jill and for any comments she has.
It's all yours, kid.
Thank you.
You know, sometimes the White House surprises you.
And there you see her, Jill Biden, Dr. Jill Biden, sorry, sitting at the head of the table presiding over a cabinet meeting.
Where all Joe Biden could do is basically give this weird, short, mumbling introduction and then turn it over to her, the kid.
It's all yours, kid.
And then she began reading the remarks in front of this cabinet meeting while the cabinet secretary sat there silent listening to a guest.
I don't know if it's Dr. Joe Biden who's the president, the functional president.
Maybe they divide it.
Maybe she's in charge of certain domestic policies.
But when it comes to matters of life and death and war and peace, the fact that the media has no interest in this story of who is actually governing the country right now, I think gives you a good sense of what our corporate media has become, but also just the I think gives you a good sense of what our corporate media has become, but also
So as I said at the top, we had a third segment planned for you, namely on the anatomy of CNN's inventing a completely fabricated quote, attributing it to Rashida Tlaib, the congressman from Michigan, in order to concoct this anti-Semitism scandal that people like Jake Tapper and Dana Bash then used to once again depict their in order to concoct this anti-Semitism scandal that people like Jake Tapper and Dana Bash then used to once again depict their own
As this singularly marginalized and victimized group, the whole time it was based on an outright lie, they then demanded that various officials condemn Rashida Tlaib for this quote that she didn't actually say.
Some of them did.
And now instead of apologizing and retracting it, they're going on air and making a clarification after the original journalist who reported on those remarks very publicly said to CNN, you're absolutely lying.
So we're going to, instead of doing it on this show, we're going to do that on the after show, just kind of go through that and what it means, just because we're out of time.
And just to remind you, every Tuesday and Thursday night, once we are done with our live show here on Rumble, it is, what we do, we move to our after show, our live interactive after show on Locals, which is for our local members only.
So if you want to become a member of our Locals community, which gives you access, not just to those twice a week after shows, where we often do put now Exclusive content, but also to a whole variety of other interactive features, including publishing written professionalized transcripts of every show that we broadcast here, we publish there the next day.
And there's a lot of original content there.
And most of all, it's the community on which we most rely to support the independent journalism.
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