Glenn Greenwald's Blog, page 169

Karl Rove's belief in "traditional marriage" laws

(updated below)

Karl Rove is an outspoken opponent of same-sex marriage, citing "5,000 years of understanding the institution of marriage" as his justification.  He also famously engineered multiple referenda to incorporate a ban on same-sex marriage into various states' constitutions in 2004 in order to ensure that so-called ""Christian conservatives" and "value voters" who believe in "traditional marriage laws" would turn out and help re-elect George W. Bush.  Yet, like so many...

Cause and effect in the "Terror War"

"In all their alleged allegedness, this Administration has an allergy to the concept of war, and thus to the tools of war, including strategy and war aims" -- Supreme Tough Guy Warrior Mark Steyn, National Review, yesterday.
"The White House has authorized an expansion of the C.I.A.'s drone program in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas, officials said this week, to parallel the president's decision, announced Tuesday, to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan" -- New York Times, December 4...

Distortions in the healthcare debate

As I've documented before, the "debate" over the President's health care reform bill has come to resemble most political debates in the U.S.:  dominated by ludicrous, obvious strawmen and bullying, manipulative tactics in lieu of substantive debate.  Proponents of the bill have continuously claimed -- falsely -- that progressive opponents object to the bill because they're petulant purists who didn't get everything they want and are therefore willing to sacrifice expanded access to health...

Distortions in the health care debate

As I've documented before, the "debate" over the President's health care reform bill has come to resemble most political debates in the U.S.:  dominated by ludicrous, obvious strawmen and bullying, manipulative tactics in lieu of substantive debate.  Proponents of the bill have continuously claimed -- falsely -- that progressive opponents object to the bill because they're petulant purists who didn't get everything they want and are therefore willing to sacrifice expanded access to health...

The Joys of Airstrikes and Anonymity

Each time the U.S. bombs a new location in the Muslim world, the same pattern emerges.  First, officials from the U.S. or allied governments run to their favorite media outlet to claim -- anonymously -- that some big, bad, notorious, "top" Al Qaeda leader "may have been" or "likely was" killed in the strike, and this constitutes a "stinging" or "devastating" blow against the Terrorist group.  These compliant media outlets then sensationalistically trumpet that claim as the dominant theme of ...

Salon Radio Transcript: Gregory Johnsen

To listen to this interview, go here and click on the recorder at the bottom, or for an MP3 file, go here:

GG: My guest today on Salon Radio is Gregory Johnsen, who is an expert on Yemen; he's a Ph.D. candidate in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University and has advised the U.S. and British governments on issues relating to Yemen. Thanks very much for joining me today.

GJ: Thanks so much for having me.

GG: So Yemen has been in the news far more so than usual over the last week...

Salon Radio: Yemen expert Gregory Johnsen

Over the last week, there have been several extremely significant though unclear events in Yemen.  As I wrote about earlier this week, last Thursday there were two sets of attacks -- one in the North on a rebellious Shiite group and one in the South on "suspected Al Qaeda sites" which caused numerous civilian deaths -- in which U.S. involvement of some kind was reported (credibly with regard to the latter, less so for the former).  This morning, there are reports of another yet air strike...

Reason Editor suggests his own magazine is lying

"The Congressional Budget Office now reports that this bill will reduce our deficit by $132 billion over the first decade, and by as much as $1.3 trillion in the decade after that" -- Barack Obama, Tuesday.

"Obama's Latest Health Care Lie:  There are actually multiple lies and deceptions in [Obama's:] paragraph, beginning with the verb 'reports' to describe what the Congressional Budget Office does. The CBO, as Peter Suderman documented in his foundational Reason feature on the...

Reason Editor suggests his own magazine is lying about health care

"The Congressional Budget Office now reports that this bill will reduce our deficit by $132 billion over the first decade, and by as much as $1.3 trillion in the decade after that" -- Barack Obama, Tuesday.

"Obama's Latest Health Care Lie:  There are actually multiple lies and deceptions in [Obama's:] paragraph, beginning with the verb 'reports' to describe what the Congressional Budget Office does. The CBO, as Peter Suderman documented in his foundational Reason feature on the...

The NYT's view of "journalistic objectivity"

(updated below)

I've written many times before about Sami al-Hajj, the Al Jazeera cameraman who was abducted by the U.S. in late 2001, tortured at Bagram, sent to Guantanamo for seven years -- where he was never charged with any crime and was interrogated overwhelmingly about Al Jazeera's operations, not about Terrorism -- and then suddenly released without explanation last year, as though the whole thing never happened.  The due-process-free imprisonment of this journalist by...