Glenn Greenwald's Blog, page 91
March 31, 2012
Tongue-cutting at Al Jazeera
I'm currently conducting interviews as a follow-up to the rather acrimonious debate that erupted this week from my argument that "terrorism expertise" is not an actual discipline, but rather (like the term "terrorism" itself) just another instrument for legitimizing the violence of the U.S. and its allies, delegitimizing the violence of their Muslim adversaries, and dressing up state propaganda with the veneer of academic neutrality (for an example of how this works, see this New York Times
March 30, 2012
The Most Transparent Administration Ever™
(updated below)
New York Times, Editorial, November 1, 2004:
[O]ne of the more worrisome domestic policy developments of the past four years [is] the Bush administration's drastic expansion of needless government secrecy.
John Dean, Worse than Watergate, 2007:
In fact, the Bush-Cheney presidency is strikingly Nixonian, only with regard to secrecy far worse.
New York Times Editorial, June 24, 2007:
President Bush has turned the executive branch into a two-way mirror. They get to see everything...
March 29, 2012
Three congressional challengers very worth supporting
For those devoted to watching the 2012 election, the presidential horse race eats up the vast bulk of attention (which is why I'm not one of those devoted to watching it), but throughout the year there are also party primaries for Congressional seats. Most Congressional contests are boring and largely inconsequential; the vast bulk features certain victory by unnotable incumbents or open-seat races between Party-approved, script-reading, poll-driven, cookie-cutter challengers. But there are a...
Three Congressional challengers very worth supporting
For those devoted to watching the 2012 election, the presidential horserace eats up the vast bulk of attention (which is why I'm not one of those devoted to watching it), but throughout the year there are also party primaries for Congressional seats. Most Congressional contests are boring and largely inconsequential: The large bulk feature certain victory by unnotable incumbents or open-seat races between Party-approved, script-reading, poll-driven, cookie-cutter challengers. But there are a ...
March 28, 2012
Guest Op-Ed: MEK and its material supporters in Washington
Jeremiah Goukla worked as a lawyer in the Bush Justice Department, and then went to work as an analyst with the RAND Corporation, where he was sent to Iraq to analyze, among other things, the Iranian dissident group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), publishing an oft-cited study on the group. MEK has been in the news of late because a high-powered bipartisan cast of former Washington officials have established close ties with the group and have been vocally advocating on its behalf, often in exchange ...
March 27, 2012
March 26, 2012
Obama takes Bush's secrecy games one step further
(updated below)
The ACLU is suing the Obama administration under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), seeking to force disclosure of the guidelines used by Obama officials to select which human beings (both U.S. citizens and foreign nationals) will have their lives ended by the CIA's drone attacks ("In particular," the group explains, the FOIA request "seeks to find out when, where and against whom drone strikes can be authorized, and how the United States ensures compliance with...
March 24, 2012
Debating assassinations on "Real Time"
I was on Real Time with Bill Maher last night and the most contentious debate occurred over the claimed power of the Obama administration to target assassinations of American citizens, such as Anwar Awlaki, without due process. Below is the clip of that discussion. One irony is that is was preceded by a discussion of hate crimes prosecutions (in the context of the Tayvon Martin and Tyler Clementi cases) in which both Maher and Andrew Sullivan insisted that Americans have the inviolable right ...
March 22, 2012
Today
Travel may make writing difficult over the next day or two (for those in/near Philadelphia, I'll be speaking at the University of Pennsylvania today, at 5:00 p.m., on Endless War and Civil Liberties in the Age of Terrorism; it is free and open to the public and event information is here). If I'm unable to write, I'll try at least to post several short items throughout the day.
(1) I'll start with this excellent article in The Week by Daniel Larison on the horrors, chaos and instability...
March 20, 2012
Ironies in American justice and political cheerleading
(updated below)
(1) A reader reminded me of this yesterday and it's really quite something: in July, 2009, NBC's Chuck Todd went on Morning Joe to defend President Obama's decision to shield all Bush officials from prosecution for torture, arguing that because Bush got his lawyers to say he could torture, it was legal. I interviewed/debated Todd a couple of days later about those views, but before I did, I wrote a reply to the argument he made on television. When doing so, I tried to think of ...
Glenn Greenwald's Blog
- Glenn Greenwald's profile
- 809 followers
