Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

What media coverage omits about U.S. hikers released by Iran - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com
►http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/09/26/iran

Fattal then expressed “great thanks to world leaders and individuals” who worked for their release, including Hugo Chavez, the governments of Turkey and Brazil, Sean Penn, Noam Chomsky, Mohammad Ali, Cindy Sheehan, Desmond Tutu, as well as Muslims from around the world and “elements within the Iranian government,” as well as U.S. officials.

Unsurprisingly, one searches in vain for the inclusion of these facts and remarks in American media accounts of their release and subsequent press conference.

[...]

Saberi’s case became a true cause célèbre among American journalists, with large numbers of them flamboyantly denouncing Iran and demanding her release. But when their own government imprisoned numerous journalists for many years without any charges of any kind — Al Jazeera’s Sami al-Haj in Guantanamo, Associated Press’ Bilal Hussein for more than two years in Iraq, Reuters’ photographer Ibrahim Jassan even after an Iraqi court exonerated him, and literally dozens of other journalists without charge — it was very difficult to find any mention of their cases in American media outlets.

U.S. to build new massive prison in Bagram - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com
►http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/09/19/bagram/index.html

As the Obama administration announced plans for hundreds of billions of dollars more in domestic budget cuts, it late last week solicited bids for the construction of a massive new prison in Bagram, Afghanistan. Posted on the aptly named FedBizOps.Gov website which it uses to announce new privatized spending projects, the administration unveiled plans for “the construction of Detention Facility in Parwan (DFIP), Bagram, Afghanistan” which includes “detainee housing capability for approximately 2000 detainees.” It will also feature “guard towers, administrative facility and Vehicle/Personnel Access Control Gates, security surveillance and restricted access systems.” The announcement provided: "the estimated cost of the project is between $25,000,000 to $100,000,000."

The Libya War argument - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com
►http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/08/22/libya/index.html

In April, 2003, American troops entered Baghdad and Saddam Hussein was forced to flee; six months later, the dictator was captured ("caught like a rat in a hole," giddy American media outlets celebrated) and eventually hanged. Each of those incidents caused massive numbers of Iraqis who had suffered under his decades-long rule to celebrate, and justifiably so: Saddam really was a monster who had brutally oppressed millions. But what was not justifiable was how those emotions were exploited by American war advocates to delegitimize domestic objections to the war. Even though opposition to the war had absolutely nothing to do with doubt about whether Saddam could be vanquished by the U.S. military — of course he could and would be — the emotions surrounding his defeat were seized upon by Iraq War supporters to boastfully claim full-scale vindication (here’s one of my all-time favorites from that intellectually corrupt genre).

.....

As I’ve emphasized from the very first time I wrote about a possible war in Libya, there are real and important differences between the attack on Iraq and NATO’s war in Libya, ones that make the former unjustifiable in ways the latter is not (beginning with at least some form of U.N. approval). But what they do have in common — what virtually all wars have in common — is the rhetorical manipulation used to justify them and demonize critics. Just as Iraq War opponents were accused of being “objectively pro-Saddam” and harboring indifference to The Iraqi People, so, too, were opponents of the Libya War repeatedly accused of being on Gadaffi’s side (courtesy of Hillary Clinton, an advocate of both wars) and/or exuding indifference to the plight of Libyans. And now, in the wake of the apparent demise of the Gadaffi regime, we see all sorts of efforts, mostly from Democratic partisans, to exploit the emotions from Gadaffi’s fall to shame those who questioned the war, illustrated by this question last night from ThinkProgress, an organization whose work I generally respect:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cG_spJFr-38/TlJWW9_YeBI/AAAAAAAAAHQ/kHhML01uY3U/s1600/tp.png

The omnipotence of Al Qaeda and meaninglessness of “Terrorism” - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com
►http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/07/23/nyt/index.html

In other words, now that we know the alleged perpetrator is not Muslim, we know — by definition — that Terrorists are not responsible; conversely, when we thought Muslims were responsible, that meant — also by definition — that it was an act of Terrorism. As Silverstein put it:

How’s that again? Are the only terrorists in the world Muslim? If so, what do we call a right-wing nationalist capable of planting major bombs and mowing down scores of people for the sake of the greater glory of his cause? If even a liberal newspaper like the Times can’t call this guy a terrorist, what does that say about the mindset of the western world?

#oslo

Wired’s refusal to release or comment on the Manning chat logs - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com
►http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/29/wired_1/index.html

I’m going to do everything possible here to ensure that the focus remains on what matters: the way in which Wired, with no justification, continues to conceal this evidence and, worse, refuses even to comment on its content, thus blinding journalists and others trying to find out what really happened here, while enabling gross distortions of the truth by Poulsen’s long-time confidant and source, the government informant Adrian Lamo.

#wikileaks #cablegate #wired #lamo

Joe Lieberman emulates Chinese dictators - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com
►http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/01/lieberman/index.html

"And “journalists” like Capehart play along by continuing to insist there’s “nothing new” being revealed by #WikiLeaks despite their never having reported any of this. And since the disclosures, does anyone believe that any of these revelations have received anything close to meaningful attention by the American establishment media?"

#censure