Glenn Greenwald's Blog, page 81
July 18, 2012
The Damascus suicide bombing
(updated below - Update II - Update III)
In Damascus today, a suicide bomber attacked a meeting of high level Syrian officials and killed several of them, including the nation's Defense Minister Daoud Rajhaand the Syrian military's Deputy Chief of Staff, Asef Shawkat, who is also the brother-in-law of Syrian PresidentBashar al-Assad. Several reporters covering the region, such as Omar Waraich of Time andThe Independent, have deduced that the suicide bomber was "Islamist."
July 17, 2012
Inept stenographers
(updated below)
A common criticism of establishment journalists entails comparing them to stenographers, on the ground that most of them do little more than mindlessly write down and uncritically repeat what government officials say. But stenography is a noble and important profession: they're the court-licensed officers who, with astonishing speed and accuracy,transcribe the statements of all witnesses, lawyers and judges in judicial proceedings. If establishment journalists were to replicate...
July 16, 2012
CNN on the Iran threat
(updated below)
Late last week, CNN's The Situation Room, starring Wolf Blitzer, reported on what Blitzer described as "an ominous new warning coming in from the Pentagon: Iran's missiles are getting more accurate, apparently getting more deadly as well." He then called on CNN's Pentagon correspondent, Chris Lawrence ("What are you learning, Chris?"), and a truly brilliant line was unveiled:
CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, Iran's missiles are getting more accurate, but t...
July 12, 2012
Excuses for assassination secrecy
In response to his widely discussed Esquirearticle entitled "The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama," Tom Junod received a telephone call from someone he describes as "a person with intimate knowledge of the executive counter-terrorism policies of the Obama administration." This unnamed person called Junod specifically to defend the administration's refusal to provide any minimal transparency or even acknowledgment about these policies, even when drone attacks ordered by the President kill inn...
July 11, 2012
America’s own Terror group
(updated below)
Yesterday morning, The Huffington Post published a post byHossein Abedini, who was identified in the byline as a "Member of Parliament in exile of Iranian Resistance." His extended HuffPost biosays that he "belongs to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran" (NCRI). The NCRI is the political arm of the Mujahideen-e Khalq, (MeK), the Iranian dissident group (and longtime Saddam ally) that has beenformally designated by the U.S. State Departmen...
July 10, 2012
Bravery and drone pilots
The effort to depict drone warfare as some sort of courageous and noble act is intensifying:
The Pentagon is considering awarding a Distinguished Warfare Medal to drone pilots who work on military bases often far removed from the battlefield. . . .
[Army Institute of Heraldrychief Charles]Mugno said most combat decorations require "boots on the ground" in a combat zone, but he noted that "emerging technologies" such as drones and cyber combat missions are now handled by troops far removed from...
July 9, 2012
Harold Ford, Jr.: smirking sociopath
(updated below)
Harold Ford, Jr. is the walking, breathing embodiment of virtually everything rotted and corrupt about the American political class. He entered Congress at the age of 26 only by virtue of nepotistic benefits: while in law school, he ran for the seat long held by his father of the same name (he then promptly failed the test for admission to the Tennessee bar). In Congress, he voted for de-regulation of Wall Street (which helped precipitate the 2008 financial crisis); to authoriz...
Rules of American justice
Gretchen Morgenson, the New York Timesbusiness reporter, yesterday wrote aboutaggressive action taken by British financial authorities against top Barclays executives in connection with illegal manipulation of LIBOR interest rates, including the bank's Chairman, Marcus Agius, and its CEO,Robert E. Diamond Jr., both of whom were forced out of their jobs. In doing so, Morgenson bluntly summarizes the general, governing rules of American justice for financial elites:
July 7, 2012
Various matters
(1) Peter Bergen of the New America Foundation think tank and CNN has become one of the most vocal cheerleaders for President Obama's Terrorism policies, and has also been the recipient of highly lucrative, exclusive access to classified information granted by Obama's administration. On July 4, Bergen, along with NAF's Jennifer Rowland, published a CNN column lauding Obama's escalated drone attacks, claiming they have "become more precise and discriminating" (even while acknowledging that the...
Kagan’s Medicaid vote
(updated below)
During the debate over Elena Kagan's Supreme Court nomination, those of us who opposed her selection argued that there was a substantial risk that she would join with the Court's four right-wing Justices more often than her predecessor, John Paul Stevens, did, and more often than other potential nominees (such as Diane Wood) would, and thus have the effect of actually moving the Court to the right (using "left" and "right" here in its conventional sense). The argument was not t...
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