Glenn Greenwald's Blog, page 89

Surveillance State evils

[the last portion of this column was cut off at some point after it was originally posted; it has now been restored]

“Th[e National Security Agency's] capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. [If a dictator ever took over, the N.S.A.] could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there woul...

America’s drone sickness

This headline and first paragraph from today’s Washington Postscoop by Greg Miller speaks volumes about so many things:

[image error]

There are many evils in the world, but extinguishing people’s lives with targeted, extra-judicial killings, when you don’t even know their names, based on “patterns” of behavior judged from thousands of miles away, definitely ranks high on the list. Although the Obama White House has not approved of this request from CIA Director David Petraeus, these so-called “signature str...

Attacks on RT and Assange reveal much about the critics

Read this story at http://www.salon.com/2012/04/18/attacks_on_rt_and_assange_reveal_much_about_the_critics/

Continue Reading...

Speech on secrecy and war

In the post I wrote earlier today, I mentioned a speech I gave in Ottawa on Thursday on secrecy, militarism, and civil liberties as it affects both the U.S. and Canada. Below is a video of that speech, courtesy of Prism Magazine, which was sponsored by the Carleton School of Journalism and Communications and the National Press Club Foundation. The event was hosted by Bill Owen, the long-time reader and commenter here whose idea it was to invite me to Ottawa and who organized the event. I was...

Personalizing civil liberties abuses

It’s sometimes easy — too easy — to think, talk or write about the assault on civil liberties in the United States, and related injustices, and conceive of them as abstractions. Two weeks ago, the Editorial Page Editor of The New York Times, Andrew Rosenthal, wrote that ever since the 9/11 attacks, the United States has created “what’s essentially a separate justice system for Muslims.” That should be an extraordinary observation: creating a radically different — and more oppressive — set of...

Feds ready whistleblower trial

Read this story at http://www.salon.com/2012/04/13/feds_prep_whistleblower_trial/

Continue Reading...

Don't trust corporate charity

[Glenn Greenwald is on vacation this week and three writers will be filling in for him]

By Murtaza Hussain

Given their existence as legal entities designed solely to generate profits for their contractual owners, it seems surprising of late that many corporations seem to have developed something akin to a soul. Seldom a week passes where there is not some heartwarming story of Exxon Mobil donating to the Wounded Warrior Project, General Electric providing Easter baskets to the needy, or Dow...

The man the State Dept. wants silenced

[Glenn Greenwald is on vacation this week and three writers will be filling in for him]

By Jesselyn Radack

Today, I'm not writing about the Espionage Act being used to chill journalists and whistleblowers, but something equally as troubling: the assault on whistleblowers' First Amendment rights, illustrated by the creepy case of Peter Van Buren.

Van Buren is a Foreign Service Officer with the State Department who wrote a book critical of U.S. reconstruction projects in Iraq, We Meant Well: How...

Wells Fargo's prison cash cow

[Glenn Greenwald is on vacation this week and three writers will be filling in for him.]

By Charles Davis

Wells Fargo is one of the top five largest banks in America, a fact that on its own is damning enough, basic human decency not exactly being conducive to success in the financial industry. Despite, or rather because of, its role as one of the leading sub-prime mortgage lenders prior to the 2008 crash in the housing market, the bank was handed $37 billion from the U.S. government, a...

America's forgotten POW: Bowe Bergdahl

[Glenn Greenwald is on vacation this week and three writers will be filling in for him]

By Murtaza Hussain

The decision to send young men and women to kill and die in foreign lands is one which is often taken without much real thought for the welfare of these individuals, often barely past the age of adulthood, despite the massive amount of rhetoric and jingoism which surrounds their deployments. Soldiers are killed and maimed with depressing regularity, registering as a brief news story and...