Glenn Greenwald's Blog, page 50

Latest FBI Claim of Disrupted Terror Plot Deserves Much Scrutiny and Skepticism

The Justice Departmenton Wednesday issued a press release trumpeting its latest success in disrupting a domestic terrorism plot, announcing that“the Joint Terrorism Task Force has arrested a Cincinnati-area man for a plot to attack the U.S. Capitol and kill government officials.”The alleged would-be terrorist is 20-year-old Christopher Cornell (above), who is unemployed, lives at home,spends most of his time playing video games in his bedroom, still addresses his mother as “Mommy” andregardsh...

France Arrests a Comedian For His Facebook Comments, Showing the Sham of the West’s “Free Speech” Celebration

Forty-eight hours after hosting a massive march under the banner of free expression, France opened a criminal investigation ofa controversial French comedian for a Facebook post he wrote about the Charlie Hebdo attack, and then this morning, arrested him for that post on charges of “defending terrorism.” The comedian,Dieudonné (above), previously sought elective office in France on what he called an “anti-Zionist” platform, has had his show banned by numerous government officials in cities th...

Dianne Feinstein, Strong Advocate of Leak Prosecutions, Demands Immunity For David Petraeus

Dianne Feinstein, Wall Street Journal, December 7, 2010 (“Prosecute Assange Under the Espionage Act”):

When WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange released his latest document trove—more than 250,000 secret State Department cables—he intentionally harmed the U.S. government. The release of these documents damages our national interests and puts innocent lives at risk. He should be vigorously prosecuted for espionage.

The law Mr. Assange continues to violate is the Espionage Act of 1917. That law make...

In Solidarity With a Free Press: Some More Blasphemous Cartoons

Defending free speech and free press rights,which typically means defending the right to disseminate the very ideas society finds most repellent, has been one of my principal passionsfor the last 20 years:previouslyas a lawyer and now as a journalist. So I consider it positive when large numbers of people loudlyinvoke this principle, as has been happening over the last 48 hours in response to the horrific attack onCharlie Hebdo in Paris.

Usually, defending free speech rights is much more of a...

With Power of Social Media Growing, Police Now Monitoring and Criminalizing Online Speech

OnMarch 6, 2012, six British soldiers were killed in Afghanistan by aroadside explosive device, and a nationalritual of mourning and rage ensued. Prime Minister David Cameron called it a “desperately sad day for our country.” A British teenager,Azhar Ahmed, observed the reaction for two daysand then went to Facebook to angrily object that the innocent Afghans killed by British soldiers receive almost noattention from British media. Heopined that the UK’ssoldiers in Afghanistan are guilty, the...

North Korea/Sony Story Shows How Eagerly U.S. Media Still Regurgitate Government Claims

The identity ofthe Sony hackersis still unknown. President Obama, in a December 19 press conference, announced:“We can confirm that North Korea engaged in this attack.” Hethen vowed:“We will respond.. . .We cannot have a society in which some dictator some place can start imposing censorship here in the United States.”

The U.S. Government’s campaign to blame North Korea actually began two days earlier, whenThe New York Times – as usual – corruptly granted anonymity to “senior administration of...

Meet Alfreda Bikowsky, the Senior Officer at the Center of the CIA’s Torture Scandals

NBC News yesterdaycalled hera “key apologist” for the CIA’s torture program. A follow-up New Yorkerarticle dubbedher “The Unidentified Queen of Torture” and in part“the model for the lead character in ‘Zero Dark Thirty.’” Yet in both articles she was anonymous.

The persondescribed by both NBC andThe New Yorker is senior CIA officer Alfreda Frances Bikowsky. Multiple news outlets have reported that as the result of a long string of significant errors and malfeasance, her competence and integrit...

Jeb Bush v. Hillary Clinton: the Perfectly Illustrative Election

Jeb Bush yesterday strongly suggested he was running for President in 2016. If he wins the GOP nomination, it is highly likely that his opponent for the presidency would be Hillary Clinton.

Having someone who is the brother of oneformer president and the son of another run against the wife of still another former president would be sweetly illustrative of all sorts of degraded and illusory aspects of American life, from meritocracy to class mobility. That one of those two families exploitedits...

U.S. TV Provides Ample Platform for American Torturers, But None to Their Victims

Ever since the torture report was released last week, U.S. television outlets have endlessly featured American torturers and torture proponents. But there was one group that was almost never heard from: the victims of their torture, not even the ones recognized by the U.S. Government itself as innocent, not even the family members of the ones theytortured to death. Whether by design (most likely) or effect, this inexcusable omission radically distorts coverage.

Whenever America is forced to co...

The Most Misogynistic, Hateful Elected Official in the Democratic World: Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro

In the lower house of Brazil’s federal Congress onTuesday, Maria do Rosário – a Congresswomansince 2003 fromformer President Lula da Silva’s Workers Party (PT) who is also the country’s formerMinister of Human Rights under President Dilma Rousseff – stood to praise the National Truth Commission. That Commission was preparing to releasea comprehensive report on the systematic human rights abuses perpetrated bythe U.S.-supported military dictatorship that ruled the country for two decades until...