Glenn Greenwald has surely lost his way

He used to be such an important contributor to the political discourse.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Gone Glenn

And I just canceled my monthly subscription to The Intercept because of the latest Greenwald bullshit.  So sad that he's gone off the deep end.  I was contributing to support Jeremy Scahill's work, and I felt bad about ending it, but Glenn had gone on Tucker saying Adam Schiff is "the most pathological liar in all America," which I could not abide.  I suppose I can resume supporting Scahill now.

What the hell happened to Glenn Greenwald?

Intercept founder Glenn Greenwald called Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) "the most pathological liar in all of American politics" accusing the House Intelligence Chairman in an interview on Fox News of fabricating "accusations at the drop of a hat the way other people change underwear."

  The Hill

Really, Glenn? Really? You do know who's the president.

"He’s simply lying when he just asserts over and over that the Russians or the Kremlin are behind this story,” Greenwald said. “He has no idea whether or not that’s true. There’s no evidence to support it.”

I was very skeptical for some time after the story of Kremlin support for Trump appeared during the 2016 campaign, but eventually there was enough evidence presented, and I dug into enough articles regarding Trump's and his campaign officers' ties to Russian corruption, to convince me there was indeed something to the accusations.

There may indeed be no evidence to support the accusation that Russia is behind the Post's story on Hunter Biden's laptops/emails.  I don't know.  Neither does Glenn.  We don't have access to US intelligence reports like Adam Schiff does.  Not that I blindly believe everything that comes from US intelligence reports - not by a long shot.  But, even if there isn't any evidence to implicate Russia, Adam Schiff is in no way, shape or form even close to being "the most pathological liar in all of American politics."  Jesus Christ, Glenn.

Greenwald also criticized Democrat Joe Biden's presidential campaign for not answering more questions about the Hunter Biden emails. He argued the media has helped the Biden campaign by raising questions about the validity of the Post story.

"The reason that they don’t answer any questions is because the media has signaled that they don’t have to," Greenwald said. "That journalists will be attacked and vilified simply for asking.”

Maybe. But that Post story has proven to be a lot of bullshit. Even some of the Post journalists refused to put their names to it.

I used to have such respect for Greenwald. WTF happened?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Oh, Glenn

Mueller found no such thing.

I'm really disappointed in Glenn.  I followed him from way back when he first started blogging, years ago.  I gave up on him when he got famous for the Edward Snowden story and his Twitter feed became nothing much more than constant bickering and barb-trading with critics.  I knew he didn't buy the Russian-Trump collusion story, and he made some good points, but there came to be too much evidence to avoid the truth: that the Trump campaign was relying heavily on the Russians for assitance. 

This is the first time I've checked on what he's saying in quite a while (although I've been seeing complaints about him, particularly for being a regular guest of Tucker Carlson).    He has good points about the FBI and government overreach, as well as about Democrats, but this is so disappointing.  Or it would be if I hadn't already been disillusioned.

 

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Comey, in a nutshell

Agree.



When the book was announced, I wanted to read it, but now that I've seen a couple snippets of Comey's writing and seen the interview, I think I'll pass.  I do agree with Matt's assessment that Comey "seems to be terminally wrestling with questions of conscience and sincerity."  That's not a bad thing.

How to (or not to) cover the Russia-Trump collusion/conspiracy investigation

Great respect for James Risen, but I would not ever want to be on the opposite side of a debate with Glenn Greenwald.  Unfortunately, these days, Greenwald's twitter account is 95% taken up in arguing with people who attack him, and his actual reporting is scarce, so it's good to see/hear some interviews and debates where his razor sharp analyses and brilliant thought processes are on display.

Having said that, including Jeremy Scahill, the collective integrity in this video is maximum, and I so very much appreciate that in these days in American politics.

UPDATE:

Matt Taibbi has the bottom line on this story:

It's a giant land mine of a story that could go either way. Mueller could leak the pee tape tomorrow, or we could be sitting here two years from now talking about a money laundering indictment that has nothing to do with Russia, or, who knows, the president might even turn out to be innocent (in this matter), at which point we'd have to start asking some questions about what this was all about.

  Rolling Stone

But hey, it distracts us from having to think about our complicity in turning the world into a steaming pile of shit and death.

Facebook's censoring policy

IN SEPTEMBER OF last year, we noted that Facebook representatives were meeting with the Israeli government to determine which Facebook accounts of Palestinians should be deleted on the ground that they constituted “incitement.” The meetings — called for and presided over by one of the most extremist and authoritarian Israeli officials, pro-settlement Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked — came after Israel threatened Facebook that its failure to voluntarily comply with Israeli deletion orders would result in the enactment of laws requiring Facebook to do so, upon pain of being severely fined or even blocked in the country.

  Glenn Greenwald

Considering that Mark Zuckerberg is a businessman, even if he weren't pro-Israel or right wing, of course he would cooperate under that threat. I can't imagine many businessmen wouldn't.

The submission to Israeli dictates is hard to overstate: As the New York Times put it in December of last year, “Israeli security agencies monitor Facebook and send the company posts they consider incitement. Facebook has responded by removing most of them.”

[...]

In the weeks following those Facebook-Israel meetings, reported The Independent, “the activist collective Palestinian Information Center reported that at least 10 of their administrators’ accounts for their Arabic and English Facebook pages — followed by more than 2 million people — have been suspended.

[...]

Last March, Facebook briefly shut down the Facebook page of the political party, Fatah, followed by millions, “because of an old photo posted of former leader Yasser Arafat holding a rifle.”

[...]

What makes this censorship particularly consequential is that “96 percent of Palestinians said their primary use of Facebook was for following news.” That means that Israeli officials have virtually unfettered control over a key communications forum of Palestinians.

That was the point, I'm sure.

Calls by Israelis for the killing of Palestinians are commonplace on Facebook, and largely remain undisturbed.

[...]

One study found that “122,000 users directly called for violence with words like ‘murder,’ ‘kill,’ or ‘burn.’ Arabs were the No. 1 recipients of hateful comments.” Yet there appears to be little effort by Facebook to censor any of that.

I have the same objection to Facebook censoring with Twitter censoring. Actually threatening murder and violence should probably get you censored at the least, but otherwise, I think even hateful and untruthful speech are guaranteed rights under our constitution, and for good reason.

This morning, following a Twitter thread, I had to click on a link that warned me the tweets I was about to reveal might be profane. That seemed like a fair exchange. The only issue was that I'd have to take Facebook's word for it.

Of course, hiding tweets behind a "protective" link may just be more tempting for people. I understand Twitter decided their similar attempts to label tweets as fake news just made people more likely to look at them. Still, I don't think that's necessarily a problem. People should probably know what's going around that isn't true. The problem I have is that someone hired by Facebook is making these decisions. Even at that, it's up to the reader to be discerning and check things out. You can neither legislate or dictate common sense - or truth. And if you're going to try to do that, then why is Fox News not censored?

Okay, rant over. For now.

Indeed, as Al Jazeera concisely put it, “Facebook hasn’t met Palestinian leaders to discuss their concern.”

And Palestinian leaders are no threat to Facebook's bank account.

FACEBOOK NOW SEEMS to be explicitly admitting that it also intends to follow the censorship orders of the U.S. government. Earlier this week, the company deleted the Facebook and Instagram accounts of Ramzan Kadyrov, the repressive, brutal, and authoritarian leader of the Chechen Republic.

[...]

A Facebook spokesperson told the New York Times that the company deleted these accounts not because Kadyrov is a mass murderer and tyrant, but that “Mr. Kadyrov’s accounts were deactivated because he had just been added to a United States sanctions list and that the company was legally obligated to act.”

[...]

As the Times notes, this rationale appears dubious or at least inconsistently applied: Others who are on the same sanctions list, such as Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, remain active on both Facebook and Instagram. But just consider the incredibly menacing implications of Facebook’s claims.

What this means is obvious: that the U.S. government — meaning, at the moment, the Trump administration — has the unilateral and unchecked power to force the removal of anyone it wants from Facebook and Instagram by simply including them on a sanctions list. Does anyone think this is a good outcome?

When this article appeared a few days ago, I passed it by for inclusion in a post (I didn't even read it), because who doesn't already know how much control the US wields over our communications? Finally, today, after seeing yet another post about how incredible and scary this development is, I decided to comment. Obviously, that last scary statement contradicts one just in the preceding paragraph. The government has the power to force the removal of any account by putting them on the sanctions list, but President Maduro, whose country is on the sanctions list, hasn't been removed. Come on, Glenn. I expect better from you.

What other countries might be on the sanctions list whose leader's account hasn't been removed?  All of them?  If there are others whose accounts have been removed, why aren't they mentioned in this article?  Too little information here.

Does Facebook’s policy of blocking people from its platform who are sanctioned apply to all governments? Obviously not. It goes without saying that if, say, Iran decided to impose sanctions on Chuck Schumer for his support of Trump’s policy of recognizing Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, Facebook would never delete the accounts of the Democratic Party Senate minority leader — just as Facebook would never delete the accounts of Israeli officials who incite violence against Palestinians or who are sanctioned by Palestinian officials.

Wow. I REALLY expect better than that. Glenn is one of the last holdouts from accusing Russia of working with the Trump campaign to get him elected, rightfully demanding actual proof and evidence (which I have finally come to believe has already been provided). And yet here he's deciding, free of evidence that Facebook would never delete accounts of Israeli or US reps. He may well be right, but he has no proof of that. No evidence. At least he's offering none.

Just last month, Russia announced retaliatory sanctions against various Canadian officials and executives, but needless to say, Facebook took no action to censor them or block their accounts.

Nor, as far as we know, has Russia threatened to block Facebook in that country if they don't.

I have very rarely taken issue with Glenn Greenwald, but this is one instance where I have to.

As is always true of censorship, there is one, and only one, principle driving all of this: power. Facebook will submit to and obey the censorship demands of governments and officials who actually wield power over it, while ignoring those who do not.

Now THAT's something that "goes without saying." And it's certainly not just true of Facebook.

Calls for state censorship may often be well-intentioned — a desire to protect marginalized groups from damaging “hate speech” — yet, predictably, they are far more often used against marginalized groups: to censor them rather than protect them. One need merely look at how hate speech laws are used in Europe, or on U.S. college campuses, to see that the censorship victims are often critics of European wars, or activists against Israeli occupation, or advocates for minority rights.

Indeed. Now we're back on the same track.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

I think that's a mistake.  Clarke is a beligerent blowhard and routinely says ignorant and ugly shit.  But now, he'll have a case for claiming that he's being unfairly treated, and he'll get even more attention.

Clarity of Vision

I Have No Doubt

Take it to the bank.

On second thought, put it in your mattress.  The banks are still doing the same unethical shit they were doing that took down the world economy.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The Joys of Blogging to a Very Small Audience

I just read this Tweet from Adam Johnson, one of the political analysts whose writing I have come to trust:

One of the reasons I trust Adam is that I regularly see Tweets where he's asking someone for a link to evidence for something they've said, and whenever he himself is challenged, he always has the evidence immediately available.  (I don't have links for those assertions!  You'll just have to take my word for it.  Or not.)

I've gotten to the point in my blogging where I will see something that, if I can't quickly confirm from other sources, I hold off repeating, and there have been plenty of times when I'm glad I did.  Sometimes these things are even posted on a site of someone whose opinions I value.  Passionate people can sometimes get fooled.

When I first started blogging You Will Anyway, way back in 2003, when the United States went so far off the rails I couldn't contain my dismay and outrage, I tended to have more attitude and a quicker trigger finger, so I ended up putting out some stuff that would embarrass me now.  After a couple of years, and the long hard slog of the presidency of George W. Bush was well into slog territory, I became more discerning about what I was reading and believing.

I stopped following some writers, most notably Josh Marshall at TPM, whom I once quoted quite regularly.  After a period of time, he revealed himself to be whatever the Nth degree of a Yellow Dog Democrat is, backing and promoting whatever the Democratic Party line is at the moment.  He didn't start out that way.  Once upon a time, he was critical in his thinking.  I wonder if increased attention and the desire to curry mainstream favor for even more recognition got in the way.  Or, in the alternative, the government came under the leadership of the Democratic Party.  Maybe he would have been the same uncritical writer he is now back in 2003 if we'd had a Democratic president.  He had a one-man operation blog back when.  It's now a full-fledged media operation with many employees.

On the other hand, I've been following Glenn Greenwald since he first started posting online.  I don't know how I ran across him, but it was from some article somewhere that quoted him, I'm sure. He was blogging back then and writing articles for different news sources. Glenn consistently critiques with a non-idealogical, non-partisan lens.  I trust him.  And yet, essentially since the Edward Snowden revelations catapulted him into the international limelight,  he no longer blogs, but he still Tweets, and he can sometimes get drawn into a lengthy back and forth with people who obviously don't know what they're talking about.  He used to just respond concisely, directly, and to the point, if sometimes curtly, without engaging in sniping or name-calling.  I liked his stuff better when he did that.  I try to allow him some slack, though, because I'm sure that since he's become associated with Snowden, and because he's a gay man living outside the country, he takes many times more the flack and personal attacks that he did before Snowden made him a household word.  I've seen recently a couple of times where he has Tweeted a quick retraction for something he said that he realized wasn't correct or was the result of a misunderstanding.  He doesn't waste any time on an apology, to be sure, but he acknowledges it.  The full length articles that he writes (for The Intercept these days), however, are always well thought out and researched, and I trust the accuracy of them 100%.

This is all to say that I try to make it a point to link anything I post to an article that informs the post.  My personal opinions should be plainly obvious.  If I were to claim, as Vox did, that Bernie Sanders said the system is rigged, I'd make sure I had a link pointing to an instance where he did just that, either a video, or a quote by a reputable news source (if not more than one).  If something seems especially controversial or even slightly "iffy" to me, I either pass it up or try to find several references to confirm it.  I don't want to mislead anyone.  Even though only a very few people ever read any of my posts, I don't want any of them to repeat something that I've printed in error.  In short, I don't want to look like a complete idiot or just another hair-trigger blow-hard.  These days it seems even the people you expect to be careful about sourcing and confirming might not be, something that's just been made stunningly evident in the recent Tweets of MSNBC's Joy Ann Reid* and Newsweek's Kurt Eichenwald**.

Not being able to trust news sources makes living in this country and trying to sort out what's necessary to be an informed citizen participating in a democracy very difficult.  Because of that, I can't really get exercised too much about the people who throw up their hands and don't try any more.  (However, if you're not going to try, could you please at least try to acknowledge that there isn't just one way to view things, and there are people who will use the fact that you're human with the attendant psyche and tendencies to pull the wool over your eyes?)

Thanks for reading, and if you find me in error, I will consider it a great service if you let me know.  Or if you need a link to something I post and fail to provide, I'll get that for you, too.  Just post in comments to the applicable blog post.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.


* Joy Ann Reid on Trump:

*Joy Ann Reid spreading Malcolm Nance's false accusation that the Wikileaks release of John Podesta's emails contain forgeries:

P.S.  Malcolm Nance has no standing to give an "official warning" in the first place.

**Kurt Eichenwald on Trump:

2016 Election Discussion

This is a fifty-minute (audio only) interview with Glenn Greenwald, but if you can work it in, even in pieces, it's a very interesting discussion about what's happening now in the 2016 election and what we might expect going into 2017.  The two men who are doing the interviewing open the session by talking about some of the important Wikileaks revelations about the Clinton campaign that are getting little or no attention because of the spectacular way in which the Trump campaign is imploding.

Click here for Unanimous Dissent's interview with Glenn Greenwald.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Ruling in the Miranda Case - David Miranda, That Is

A British court found that the detention of David Miranda was legal under Britain's Terrorism Act, but that the law itself is a violation of human rights, not providing sufficient protections for journalists, and needs to be repealed.

If you've forgotten, Miranda is Glenn Greenwald's partner who was held at Heathrow airport for nine hours and questioned without a lawyer back in 2013 when Greenwald was in Hong Kong with Edward Snowden.  Miranda sued.

The court issued a declaration of incompatibility, which leaves it to Parliament to decide how to change the law so that it is compatible with Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights Act, which protects freedom of expression.

  HuffPo

I'm wondering how the law was conceived in the first place. Well, actually, not the law, but the provision that allows people to be held for nine hours. Why nine?

I'm also wondering what they will do to harass and intimidate if they don't have that law to use. Because they will do something.

UK Oversight May Set the Bar Even Lower Than US Congressional Oversight

The intelligence and security committee is a watchdog that rarely barks. Indeed, its members have sometimes kept their harshest words for those who raise the alarm while they doze. Before Edward Snowden blew the whistle, the ISC never used its privileged access to the intelligence agencies to interrogate the bulk harvesting of communications data, or even to reveal that it happened. Perhaps it never knew. After all, it was – until he was caught chatting cheerfully about his light workload – chaired by Sir Malcolm Rifkind. Its members are nominated by the prime minister, and the technical expertise that it draws on often comes from former intelligence insiders.

In the week that the foreign secretary has said that it’s time to “move on” from Snowden, this slumbering scrutineer has finally got around to acknowledging the systematic trawling of web traffic and call records. This must be counted as progress – of a very British sort.

  Guardian

Glenn Greenwald weighs in.

Just as the Bush administration and the U.S. media re-labelled “torture” with the Orwellian euphemism “enhanced interrogation techniques” to make it more palatable, the governments and media of the Five Eyes surveillance alliance are now attempting to re-brand “mass surveillance” as “bulk collection” in order to make it less menacing (and less illegal).

[...]

The Committee actually acknowledged for the first time (which Snowden documents log ago proved) that GCHQ maintains what it calls “Bulk Personal Datasets” that contain “millions of records,” and even said about pro-privacy witnesses who testified before it: “we recognise their concerns as to the intrusive nature of bulk collection.” That is the very definition of “mass surveillance,” yet the Committee simply re-labelled it “bulk collection,” purported to distinguish it from “mass surveillance,” and thus insist that it was all perfectly legal.

[...]

One of the many facts that made the re-defining of “torture” so corrupt and indisputably invalid was that there was long-standing law making clear that exactly these interrogation techniques used by the U.S. government were torture and thus illegal. The same is true of this obscene attempt to re-define “mass surveillance” as nothing more than mere innocent “bulk collection.”

[...]

By itself, common sense should prevent any of these governments from claiming that sweeping up, storing, and analyzing much of the internet – literally examining billions of communications activities every week of entire populations – is something other than “mass surveillance.” Yet this has now become the coordinated defense from the governments in the U.S., the UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

  Glenn Greenwald

And as a British reporter found out, you simply cannot take on Glenn Greenwald. Don’t try. You’ll just look like the idiot you probably are.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Last night, I was on the BBC program Newsnight to discuss the new report. As usual, they decided to interview me first, and then interview a security services official after me, so that I could not respond to what the official said. In this case, the interviewee after me was former GCHQ director David Omand.

[...]

Omand literally demands that there be no more surveillance disclosures or debate because The Committee Has Spoken (also a clearly coordinated message).

  Glenn Greenwald

Good Post-Oscar Interview with Glenn Greenwald

Fixed.
And here's the link:  http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/glenn-greenwald-on-oscar-win-treason-joke-403273795811

Frivolous Horace Shit

Attorneys representing a Kansas man filed a civil suit in District Court on Friday last week in which they allege that Snowden, movie director Laura Poitras and others involved in making “Citizenfour” intentionally violated federal law by profiting off of the disclosure of state secrets.

“This is an action on behalf of the American people to seek prompt imposition of the Supreme Court’s essential financial remedy – a constructive trust – to redress unjust enrichment by ensuring that ill-gotten gains are disgorged,” begins the civil action complaint.

[...]

According to the suit, Snowden and the film’s production team ran afoul of a 1979 Supreme Court decision in which the nation’s top justices agreed by a 6-3 vote that First Amendment rights don’t protect Americans from instances in which their speech breaches any “constructive trust” existing between the government and an agent privy to its inner workings. In the case of Citizenfour, the plaintiff — Horace B. Williams, a former secretary of the Kansas Department of Transportation and a retired Navy officer who once held a security clearance — says Snowden broke his agreement with the US government because he and the film crew will make a “covet financial gain for their misconduct,” namely discussing classified documents in a manner that makes them available to potential audiences of “foreign enemies.”

[...]

Meanwhile, no fewer than two other films concerning the NSA leaker are currently in the works. Last month, The Guardian confirmed that actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt has accepted the role of Snowden in a forthcoming feature being directed by veteran filmmaker Oliver Stone.

  RT

Looking forward to it.

And wondering about Glenn Greenwald's (possibly defunct) deal with Sony to make a Snowden movie is coming along in light of the latest Sony scandal, including talk that Sony is cozy with the CIA.

Documentary Recommendation

I got the chance to see Citizenfour yesterday. All I'm going to say is: Go see it if at all possible.  You don't get enough opportunity to see principled, intelligent, brilliant and brave people.  And you'll learn some things you didn't already know.

Terrorism

What it is (and isn't), and how we respond to it.

Glenn Greenwald in Ottawa 10/25/2014
 (First half is his presentation; second half is discussion, Q&A.)

Citizen Four: Revelation of the Second Leaker

“Citizenfour” unexpectedly ends in startling, quasi-comic dumbshow fashion in Moscow, as Greenwald reveals to a goggle-eyed Snowden the as-yet undisclosed revelations of an even higher-up whistleblower by scribbling words on scraps of paper, promptly read, digested, and just sporadically caught by the camera. The papers are then torn into small squares, with only the word “Potus” clearly visible. Whether this coda records fact or theatricalizes unrealistic speculation remains unclear.

  Variety

This Variety review and a Hollywood Reporter review both talk about this revelation that the second leaker implicates the president in the same manner. Hollywood Reporter says you are “free to believe it or not.”

What are they afraid of? Of course there is going to be scrambling and denial coming from the White House, and perhaps attempts to seriously silence the second leaker. But for all we know about Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald, what reason do we possibly have to disbelieve this one item?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Why Privacy Matters

Good on Glenn

Glenn Greenwald has been asked to be a witness in Germany for an investigation there into NSA spying. Here's his answer (in part):

I am very supportive of any attempt by the German Parliament to conduct a serious investigation into NSA spying on Germans.

Unfortunately, German politicians have demonstrated, with their refusal to interview the key witness in person - Edward Snowden - that they care far more about not upsetting the U.S. than they do about conducting a serious investigation.

As a result, I am not willing to participate in a ritual that is intended to cast the illusion of an investigation, but which is actually designed to avoid any real investigation, placate the German public with empty symbolism, and keep the culprit - the U.S. Government - happy.

  Glenn Greenwald