User:-Mona-/Glenn Greenwald

Glenn Greenwald

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Glenn Greenwald (born 1967) is an American journalist and attorney who has written for Salon and The Guardian and is now at eBay co-founder Pierre Omidyar's successful vanity project First Look Media, which funds The Intercept, an investigative journalism site Greenwald co-launched with Jeremy Schahill and Laura Poitras in 2014. Greenwald's beat has generally included national security issues as they impact on civil liberties, free speech and press freedom, media criticism and U.S. and allies' foreign policy in the Middle East.

While at the Guardian, in late 2012 he was approached online by an anonymous person who would eventually claim to have documents from the NSA revealing U.S.-led global electronic surveillance. In May of 2013, Greenwald, along with his friend and colleague Poitras and Guardian journalist Ewen McAskill, all met Edward Snowden in Hong Kong and began reporting on top secret documents revealing a Global Surveillance Apparatus that included telephone metadata of all Americans. For this reporting at the Guardian (led by Greenwald), the Guardian and the Washington Post won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in the category of Public Service.

Life and views

Though initially he had acquiesced to the Iraq War, by the time he began blogging in 2005 Greenwald had turned strongly against it and his writing has consistently been critical of both that war and its neoconservative promoters. Also in his first months of blogging in 2005, Greenwald began writing scathingly about the NSA's Bush-era warrantless wiretapping scandal pointed out dangers in the Patriot Act, and analysed the Bush Administration's execrable justifications for Guantanamo.

Greenwald has long refused to identify himself politically and finds political labels nearly meaningless:

"Ever since I began writing about politics back in 2005, people have tried to apply pretty much every political label to me. It's almost always a shorthand method to discredit someone without having to engage the substance of their arguments. It's the classic ad hominem fallacy: you don't need to listen to or deal with his arguments because he's an X. Back then - when I was writing every day to criticize the Bush administration - Bush followers tried to apply the label "far leftist" to me. Now that I spend most of my energy writing critically about the Obama administration, Obama followers try to claim I'm a "right-wing libertarian."

Though sometimes accused by Democratic partisans of being a Libertarian, Greenwald has advocated many positions libertarians would hate such as opposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Moreover, to the consternation of wingnuts Greenwald has spoken more than once at a Socialism Conference where he nearly gushes warmth and enthusiasm, so he's probably left of center. In any event, he has been harshly critical of both George W. Bush and the Republican party as well as of Obama and the Democratic party.

Greenwald is gay and lives in Brazil with his spouse, Brazilian national David Miranda. They reside in that country because when they became a couple the so-called Defense of Marriage Act was still in effect in the U.S. and Miranda could not have received a visa to live in the U.S. with Greenwald, but Brazil recognized their relationship and granted a visa to Greenwald. Greenwald travels frequently and is often in the United States for speaking events and to visit friends and family.

Controversies

Greenwald is a former civil rights lawyer and often writes and speaks as a contentious litigator would. People who've been stung by his criticisms frequently accuse him of ad hominem attacks. An annoyed Daily Kos writer compiled a summary of purported deceit in 30 of Greenwald's Salon articles.

Many who disagree with Greenwald's views and aggressive advocacy regard him as an asshole, and some claim that years ago he was using sockpuppet accounts to self-promote.

In his first year of blogging a few of Greenwald's posts could be considered right-wing, and he declared opinions such as: "The parade of evils caused by illegal immigration is widely known, and it gets worse every day." (Greenwald has added a note to that article pointing out that he no longer holds that view and supports the DREAM Act.)

Greenwald is well-know for sparring with -- and dripping contempt -- when interacting with most establishment journalists. In an exchange with David Gregory on NBC’s Meet the Press that went viral, Greenwald smacked down Gregory for "publicly mus[ing] about whether or not other journalists should be charged with felonies.” During his appearance on a CNN panel discussion of Julian Assange and Wikileaks, Greenwald also mocked CNN's Jessica Yellin as essentially acting as a government mouthpiece, and when subsequently writing about Yellin's sad performance heaped scorn on "America’s intrepid Watchdog journalists." Perhaps Greenwald's most entertaining contretemps with a journalist was his appearance on the BBC's Newsnight where interviewer Kristy Wark asked absurd questions, including an inquiry about what Greenwald kept in his bedroom (she speculated he might have some Snowden documents there). British journalist Jonathan Cook said Wark "parrot[ed] British government misinformation and fire[d] at [Greenwald] questions so childish even she seems to realise half way through them how embarrassing they are." Greenwald, of course, was hardly left speechless and the entire "interview" is worth watching for the entertainment value.

Prominent attorney Alan Dershowitz detests Greenwald and considers him an "anti-American" felon who "loves tyrannical regimes." Greenwald fully returns the animosity, and the day before a Toronto-based formal debate -- which Greenwald won -- on the legality and morality of the NSA programs confirmed by the Snowden documents Greenwald said he finds Dershowitz (along with General Michael Hayden, Dershowitz's debate partner) to be "...two of the most pernicious human beings on the planet. I find them morally offensive. There’s an element of hypocrisy to being in the same room with them, treating them as if I have outward respect, because I don’t."

Another source of Dershowitz's loathing of Greenwald is that Dershowitz is a pro-Israel advocate while Greenwald just as fiercely criticizes both that country and the pro-Israel lobby in the United States. It has been put forth that Greenwald's statements on Israel and the pro-Israel lobby are anti-semitic. Greenwald dismisses these accusations declaring that Zionists are "casually and promiscuously accusing political adversaries of anti-semitism". He warns that "cheapening the charge of anti-semitism through frivolous and politically manipulative uses weakens the ability to combat actual, real anti-semitism."

Non-Support for Ron Paul

Greenwald holds a limited admiration for Ron Paul. But he laments the man's deep errors:

There are very few political priorities, if there are any, more imperative than having an actual debate on issues of America’s imperialism; the suffocating secrecy of its government; the destruction of civil liberties which uniquely targets Muslims, including American Muslims; the corrupt role of the Fed; corporate control of government institutions by the nation’s oligarchs; its destructive blind support for Israel, and its failed and sadistic Drug War. More than anything, it’s crucial that choice be given to the electorate by subverting the two parties’ full-scale embrace of these hideous programs.

I wish there were someone who did not have Ron Paul’s substantial baggage to achieve this.

As Ed Brayton has noted, many conflate Greenwald's narrow approval of select Paul positions with endorsement, a falsehood that Brayton is also accused of. Brayton labels Greenwald's analysis of Paul as "brilliant," declaring that it "perfectly explains why I have said many of the things I’ve said about Ron Paul...it also speaks strongly to the question of how liberals should handle libertarians and libertarianism as a whole."

So potent is this poison that no inoculation against it exists. No matter how expressly you repudiate the distortions in advance, they will freely flow. Hence: I’m about to discuss the candidacies of Barack Obama and Ron Paul, and no matter how many times I say that I am not “endorsing” or expressing support for anyone’s candidacy, the simple-minded Manicheans and the lying partisan enforcers will claim the opposite.

In point of fact, the only political endorsements Greenwald has awarded have been to left-wing Democrats, e.g. Russ Feingold and Rush Holt. Additionally, in January of 2016, Greenwald published his interview of progressive Democrat, Tim Canova, who is challenging incumbent Debbie Wasserman Schultz in the Florida primaries. Greenwald linked to a site where contributions to Canova's campaign may be made.

Books and films

Greenwald's books:

• How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok (2006)
• A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency (2007)
• Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics (2008)
• With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful (2012)
• No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State (2015)

Films about Greenwald:

• Citizenfour (2014) (Winner of 2014 Academy Award for best documentary. Footage of Greenwald, Snowden and McAskill in Hong Kong and examination of privacy implications of the NSA's myriad electronic surveillance programs.)
• Snowden (set to release in May 2016. Directed by Oliver Stone. Snowden portrayed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Greenwald by Zachary Quinto, and Poitras by Melissa Leo.)

External links

• Greenwald's blog Unclaimed Territory
• Greenwald's column at Salon
• Greenwald's column at The Guardian
• The Intercept, Greenwald, Poitras and Scahill's news site