Glenn Greenwald's Blog, page 38

Exploiting Emotions About Paris to Blame Snowden, Distract from Actual Culprits Who Empowered ISIS

Whistleblowers are always accused of helping America’s enemies (top Nixon aides accused Daniel Ellsberg of being a Soviet spy and causing the deaths of Americans with his leak); it’s just the tactical playbook that’s automatically used. So it’s of course unsurprising thatever since Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing enabled newspapers around the world to report on secretly implemented programs of mass surveillance, he has been accused by “officials” and their various media alliesof Helping The T...

Interview with Charlie Savage on Obama’s War on Terror Legacy

IN FEBRUARY 2009 — just one month after Obama’s inauguration — a series of policy announcements from the new administration startled and angered civil liberties activists because they amounted to a continuation of some of the most controversial Bush/Cheney war on terror programs. That ledNew York TimesPulitzer Prize-winning reporter Charlie Savage to observe that “the Obama administration is quietly signaling continued support for other major elements of its predecessor’s approach to fighting...

TRANSCRIPT: Interview with Charlie Savage on Obama’s War on Terror Legacy

This is the full transcript of ourinterview with Charlie Savage. To listen to the audio,click here.

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

GREENWALD: This is Glenn Greenwald with The Intercept and my guest is the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter with The New York Times, Charlie Savage, who has a newly published book, the title of which is Power Wars: Inside Obama’s Post-9/11 Presidency. And I think the best way to describe this book is that it’s really a comprehensive history on all of t...

U.S. Journalists Who Instantly Exonerated Their Government of the Kunduz Hospital Attack, Declaring it an “Accident”

(updated below – Update II)

Shortly afterthe news brokeof the U.S. attack on a Doctors without Borders (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, there was abundantevidence suggesting (not proving, but suggesting) that the attack was no accident: (1) MSF repeatedly told the U.S. military about the precise coordinatesof its hospital, which had been operating for years; (2) the Pentagon’s story about what happened kept changing,radically, literally on a daily basis; (3) the exact same MSF hospital...

Leaked Emails From Pro-Clinton Group Reveal Censorship of Staff on Israel, AIPAC Pandering, Warped Militarism

(updated below)

LEAKED INTERNAL EMAILS from the powerful Democratic think tank Center for American Progress (CAP) shed light on several public controversies involving the organization,particularly in regard to itspositioningon Israel. They revealthe lengths to which the group has gone in order to placate AIPAC and long-time Clinton operative and Israel activist Ann Lewis —including censoring its own writers on the topic of Israel.

The emails also provide crucial context for understandingCAP’s...

Why Is The Daily Beast’s Russia Critic Silent About So Many Hideous Abuses?

A comprehensive review byThe Interceptof the writings of Sam Charles Hamad — author of thisDaily Beast articleaccusing the “global left” of remaining “silent” on abuses by Russia —reveals that he has been completely silent, shockingly and appallingly so, about the following wide array of severe global injustices, never once writing about, let alone condemning, any of this:

Police brutality in Peru (“police and the armed forces have been granted a ‘licence to kill’ demonstrators”) High-level...

Anti-Israel Activism Criminalized in the Land of Charlie Hebdo and “Free Speech”

The post-Charlie Hebdo “free speech” march in Paris was a fraud for multiplereasons, as I wrote at the time. It was led by dozens of world leaders, many of whomimprison or even kill people for expressing prohibited views. It was cheered by many Westernerswho feign upsetonly when free speech abridgments are perpetrated by Muslims, but not —as is far more common — by their own governments against Muslims.

Worst of all, the marchtook place in a country thatis one of the most hostileto free speec...

Anti-Israel Activism Criminalized in the Land of Charlie Hebdo and “Free Speech“

The post-Charlie Hebdo “free speech” march in Paris was a fraud for multiplereasons, as I wrote at the time. It was led by dozens of world leaders, many of whomimprison or even kill people for expressing prohibited views. It was cheered by many Westernerswho feign upsetonly when free speech abridgments are perpetrated by Muslims, but not —as is far more common — by their own governments against Muslims.

Worst of all, the marchtook place in a country thatis one of the most hostileto free speec...

BBC Protects U.K.’s Close Ally Saudi Arabia With Incredibly Dishonest and Biased Editing

The BBC loves to boast about how “objective” and “neutral” it is. But a recent article, which it was forced to change, illustrates the lengths to which the British state-funded media outletwill go to protect one of the U.K. government’s closest allies, Saudi Arabia, which also happens to be one of the country’slargest arms purchasers (just this morning, the Saudi ambassador to the U.K. threatenedin an op-ed that any further criticism of theRiyadhregime by Jeremy Corbyn couldjeopardize the mul...

Israel Calls a Man Its Soldiers Killed a “Terrorist”: Until They Realized He Was an Israeli Jew

The Jerusalem Posttoday describes the killing of a man by two IDF soldiers after, the soldiers claim, he was acting erratically and tried to grab one of their guns. When he was fatally shot by the IDF, says the paper, he was “believed to be an Arab terrorist.” As it turns out, he wasnot an Arab Palestinian but rather an Israeli Jew. Upon learning this, the “terrorist” designation was officially and “immediately” rescinded:

Only after the man was neutralized was it made clear that he was a Jew...