Glenn Greenwald's Blog, page 75

Election year garbage | Glenn Greenwald

Whatever is awful about the US political process is magnified in the election season, and increases each day until it's mercifully over

These episodes, all from the last 24 hours, demonstrate why I cannot wait for the election to be over:

Mitt Romney, Monday, in his heralded foreign policy speech:

"This is the struggle that is now shaking the entire Middle East to its foundation. . . . In short, it is a struggle between liberty and tyranny, justice and oppression, hope and despair."

Mitt Romney,...

Iran sanctions now causing food insecurity, mass suffering | Glenn Greenwald

Yet again, the US and its allies spread mass human misery though a policy that is as morally indefensible as it is counter-productive

(updated below)

The Economist this week describes the intensifying suffering of 75 million Iranian citizens as a result of the sanctions regime being imposed on them by the US and its allies [my emphasis]:

"Six years ago, when America and Europe were putting in place the first raft of measures to press Iran to come clean over its nuclear ambitions, the talk was o...

The US presidential debates' illusion of political choice | Glenn Greenwald

The issue is not what separates Romney and Obama, but how much they agree. This hidden consensus has to be exposed

Wednesday night's debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney underscored a core truth about America's presidential election season: the vast majority of the most consequential policy questions are completely excluded from the process. This fact is squarely at odds with a primary claim made about the two parties – that they represent radically different political philosophies – an...

Obama's Libya response highlights his foreign policy mentality | Glenn Greenwald

Extreme secrecy, extrajudicial assassinations, and a self-perpetuating militarism are driving Benghazi responses

Three new articles - one today from the New York Times, one today from Associated Press, and another on Tuesday from the Washington Post - describe the approach being planned by the Obama administration to the consulate attack in Benghazi. All three highlight the standard and now-familiar attributes of Obama's approach to foreign policy.

The Times describes how the Pentagon and CIA a...

The true reason US fears Iranian nukes: they can deter US attacks | Glenn Greenwald

GOP Senator Lindsey Graham echoes a long line of US policymakers: Iran must not be allowed to deter US aggression

In the Washington Post today, Richard Cohen expresses surprise that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is "starting to make some sense" and "wax rationally". Cohen specifically cites this statement from the Iranian president last week:

"Let's even imagine that we have an atomic weapon, a nuclear weapon. What would we do with it? What intelligent person would fight 5,000 American...

Moderation: an open discussion | Glenn Greenwald

An improved system for moving forward

As many of you know, the integration of my long-standing comment section into the Guardian environment has been quite bumpy. I've spent substantial time with the community team over the past few weeks trying to resolve these problems. It took some time for moderators here to learn the purposes of my comment section and the key role it plays in the work that is done here. I'm now hopeful that, going forward, application of the Guardian's community standards...

New Stanford/NYU study documents the civilian terror from Obama's drones | Glenn Greenwald

New research shows the terrorizing impact of drones in Pakistan, false statements from US officials, and how it increases the terror threat

A vitally important and thoroughly documented new report on the impact of Obama's drone campaign has just been released by researchers at NYU School of Law and Stanford University Law School. Entitled "Living Under Drones: Death, Injury and Trauma to Civilians From US Drone Practices in Pakistan", the report details the terrorizing effects of Obama's drone...

State department attacks CNN for doing basic journalism | Glenn Greenwald

Obama officials hide behind Ambassador Stevens' family to delegitimize reporting that reflects poorly on them

Three days after Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed in Benghazi, Libya, CNN found a seven-page handwritten journal he had written. That journal, found on the floor of what CNN called "the largely unsecured consulate compound where he was fatally wounded", contained obviously newsworthy information: specifically that "in the months leading up to his death, the late ambassador worried a...

Five lessons from the de-listing of MEK as a terrorist group | Glenn Greenwald

A separate justice system for American Muslims, the US embrace of terrorism, and other key political facts are highlighted

(updated below)

The Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), or People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran, is an Iranian dissident group that has been formally designated for the last 15 years by the US State Department as a "foreign terrorist organization". When the Bush administration sought to justify its attack on Iraq in 2003 by accusing Saddam Hussein of being a sponsor of "internation...

Five lessons from the de-listing of MEK as a terrorist group

A separate justice system for American Muslims, the US embrace of terrorism, and other key political facts are highlighted

The Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), or People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran, is an Iranian dissident group that has been formally designated for the last 15 years by the US State Department as a "foreign terrorist organization". When the Bush administration sought to justify its attack on Iraq in 2003 by accusing Saddam Hussein of being a sponsor of "international terrorism",...