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Snowden’s Ride, Part 6: Why Did Glenn Greenwald Represent Neo-Nazis Pro Bono?

Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained here. (The flash dri­ve includes the anti-fas­cist books avail­able on this site.)

COMMENT: We’ve cov­ered Eddie “The Friend­ly Spook” Snow­den’s exploits in numer­ous pre­vi­ous posts: Part IPart IIPart IIIPart IVPart VPart VIPart VII, Part VIIIPart IXPart X, Part XI, Part XII.) Users of this web­site are emphat­i­cal­ly encour­aged to exam­ine these posts in detail, as it is impos­si­ble to do jus­tice to the argu­ments in those arti­cles in the scope of this post.

Suf­fice it to say, for our pur­pos­es here, that Snow­den’s activ­i­ties are–quite obviously–an intel­li­gence oper­a­tion direct­ed at Barack Oba­ma’s admin­is­tra­tion at one lev­el and the Unit­ed States and U.K. at anoth­er.

We note that the indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions involved with Snow­den, as well as Fast Eddie him­self, track back to the far right, Nazi, white suprema­cists, Holo­caust deniers and ele­ments and indi­vid­u­als involved with the Under­ground Reich. Again, PLEASE exam­ine the pre­vi­ous posts on the sub­ject, as there is no way to flesh out this line of inquiry in this post. 

In past dis­cus­sion of Eddie the Friend­ly Spook’s leak­er of choice, Guardian jour­nal­ist Glenn Green­wald, we not­ed that he has pro­fes­sion­al­ly net­worked with the Koch broth­ers fund­ed Cato Insti­tute. Green­wald’s pro­fes­sion­al asso­ci­a­tions include far more odi­ous rela­tion­ships.

Green­wald launched his own legal busi­ness, rep­re­sent­ing “unpop­u­lar clients,” includ­ing neo-Nazis. For five years, Green­wald defend­ed Matthew Hale, head of the World Church of the Cre­ator, cur­rent­ly serv­ing a 40-year prison term for plot­ting against the life of a judge. (See text excerpt below.)

(We’ve spo­ken of the World Church of the Cre­ator in FTR #‘s 168, 222, 633.)

We high­light a num­ber of con­sid­er­a­tions in light of Green­wald’s efforts on behalf of Nazi blood­let­ters:

  • As is the case with Snow­den’s embrace of Nazi Ron Paul for Pres­i­dent, this asso­ci­a­tion negates any pre­tense on the part of Green­wald of being “for human­i­ty.”
  • In his defense of Matthew Hale (being sued by shoot­ing vic­tims, who were set upon by one of Hale’s foot sol­diers) Green­wald vio­lat­ed legal ethics by tap­ing wit­ness­es. (See text excerpt below.) Appar­ent­ly, Green­wald’s belief in the incor­rect­ness of secret tap­ing of pri­vate com­mu­ni­ca­tions is high­ly selec­tive.
  • Green­wald labeled and insult­ed the plain­tiffs in the case in very strong terms, call­ing them “odi­ous.” (See text excerpt below.)
  • We won­der about Green­wald’s lover of some 11 years–an Aus­tri­an-born lawyer named Wern­er Achatz. Might he have been Under­ground Reich? Might Achatz have recruited/assisted Green­wald? Green­wald’s legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Nazis was large­ly pro bono. How was he pay­ing his bills? Did he have mon­ey saved up? Were oth­er “unpop­u­lar clients” more fis­cal­ly forth­com­ing?
  • It is quite clear that Green­wald is a “conservative/libertarian mole” with­in the pro­gres­sive move­ment, whose intent is to dam­age Oba­ma.
  • In past dis­cus­sion of L’Af­faire Snow­den, we opined that part of the goal of this psy-op was to alien­ate younger and more ide­al­is­tic vot­ers from Oba­ma, in order to per­mit the GOP to grab the White House and both hous­es of Con­gress.
  • In an arti­cle about Green­wald by Out.com, Green­wald tout­ed the neces­si­ty for a third par­ty, laud­ing GOP gov­er­nor Charles John­son of New Mex­i­co as a pos­si­ble can­di­date in 2012. (See text excerpt below.) 
  • It will be inter­est­ing to see if anoth­er pied-piper in the Ralph Nad­er mode is fash­ioned in 2016 to siphon off votes from the Democ­rats.

“Van­field” post­ed an inter­est­ing com­ment, not­ing that Stephen Walt, whose anti-Israel Lob­by tome appears to be a man­i­fes­ta­tion of doc­tri­naire anti-Semi­tism and prob­a­ble Mus­lim Broth­er­hood influ­ence has laud­ed Snow­den as anoth­er “Edward R. Mur­row”–as grotesque a mis­nomer as one could think of.

 “How Glenn Green­wald Became Glenn Green­wald” by Jes­si­ca Tes­ta; buzzfeed.com; 6/26/2013.

EXCERPT: . . . . Green­wald also spent rough­ly FIVE YEARS defend­ing the First Amend­ment rights of neo-Nazis, includ­ing Matthew Hale, the “Pon­tif­ex Max­imus” of the Illi­nois church for­mer­ly known as the World Church of the Cre­ator, one of whose dis­ci­ples went on a mur­der­ous spree in 1999.

“I almost always did it pro bono,” Green­wald said. “I was inter­est­ed in defend­ing polit­i­cal prin­ci­ples that I believed in. I didn’t even care about mak­ing mon­ey any­more.” . . .

“Glenn Green­wald: Life Beyond Bor­ders” by Fred Bern­stein; out.com; 4/18/2011.

EXCERPT: . . . . By the third year of law school, he was work­ing for a large law firm. But real­iz­ing that rep­re­sent­ing Gold­man Sachs would have destroyed him psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly, he set up his own firm, which rep­re­sent­ed sev­er­al neo-Nazis and oth­er unpop­u­lar clients.

When he and his for­mer boyfriend, Wern­er Achatz, an Aus­tri­an-born lawyer, tried to lease an apart­ment, they were told they could­n’t aggre­gate their incomes. “They said they only do that for mar­ried cou­ples,” Green­wald recalls. “We said we were a mar­ried cou­ple.” When that did­n’t fly, Green­wald became his own lawyer, suing the land­lord for sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and mar­i­tal sta­tus dis­crim­i­na­tion.

By 2004 he had tired of lit­i­gat­ing, and was also at the end of an 11-year rela­tion­ship with Achatz. He rent­ed an apart­ment in Rio de Janeiro, expect­ing to remain there for two months. Emo­tion­al­ly drained, he says, “The last thing I was look­ing for was anoth­er rela­tion­ship. Espe­cial­ly in Rio.” But on his first day on the beach, he met Miran­da. . . .

. . . . One of his hopes for 2012 is that can­di­dates will emerge to take on the red and the blue teams — he is keep­ing an eye on Gary John­son, a two-term Repub­li­can gov­er­nor of New Mex­i­co, who is pro-gay and anti­war, and who could run with a Demo­c­rat like for­mer Wis­con­sin sen­a­tor Russ Fein­gold. He would also be hap­py to see a bil­lion­aire run with­out the help of either par­ty, to dis­rupt the two-par­ty stran­gle­hold. . . .

“Glenn Green­wald Uneth­i­cal­ly Taped Wit­ness­es While Work­ing for Matt Hale, White Suprema­cist; Demo­c­ra­t­ic Under­ground.

EXCERPT: . . . .Case in point:

Glenn Green­wald made a choice to defend Matthew Hale in a series of civ­il law­suits that Hale faced after he encour­aged shoot­er Ben­jamin Smith to go on a two-state shoot­ing ram­page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Nathaniel_Smith

If you don’t know who Hale is, well, he’s a pret­ty famous white suprema­cist who is cur­rent­ly serv­ing 40 years for solic­it­ing the mur­der of a fed­er­al judge who ruled against him in a trade­mark case. Who put him away? Patrick Fitzger­ald. (Yes. And Mr. Green­wald got an FBI vis­it regard­ing the pass­ing of cod­ed mes­sages by Hale while under SAMS restric­tions.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_F._Hale

Mr. Hale, for his role in the shoot­ings, was sued by a num­ber of sur­vivors. This includ­ed a case filed by two teenage Ortho­dox Jew­ish boys. And anoth­er case filed by a Black min­is­ter. These peo­ple were select­ed by Ben­jamin Smith because they looked like the religious/ethnic minori­ties they are.

And Glenn Green­wald called them ‘odi­ous and repug­nant’ for suing his client–

Indeed the Cen­ter’s suit appears to link Hale’s rejec­tion into the bar to Smith’s “ram­page.” In late June, the state bar’s Com­mit­tee on Char­ac­ter and Fit­ness again denied Hale’s peti­tion to join the bar. Smith, who had tes­ti­fied as a char­ac­ter wit­ness for Hale that April, began shoot­ing two days lat­er. “Imme­di­ate­ly after the Illi­nois State Bar’s deci­sion and as part of the World Church of the Cre­ator’s war, Smith ... began a ram­page of geno­ci­dal vio­lence,” the law­suit states.

And while Hale him­self has linked the shoot­ings to his bar appli­ca­tion in the past, he said Tues­day that it’s ridicu­lous to think he had any con­trol over Smith.

SNIP

Fur­ther, Green­wald said, “I find that the peo­ple behind these law­suits are tru­ly so odi­ous and repug­nant, that cre­ates its own moti­va­tion for me.”

The first suit, filed in state court by Chica­go attor­ney Michael Ian Ben­der on behalf of two Ortho­dox Jew­ish teens shot at in Rogers Park, is pend­ing, though a cir­cuit judge in Chica­go threw out alle­ga­tions that Smith’s par­ents were some­how respon­si­ble for the shoot­ings.

http://www.rickross.com/reference/hale/hale33.html

It was­n’t enough that Glenn took the case, which was his right to do. No–he had to insult the Plaintiffs–shooting vic­tims. And then, he uneth­i­cal­ly taped the wit­ness­es he sub­poe­naed, even direct­ing their state­ments. A court found that he vio­lat­ed TWO sep­a­rate rules–

“The mag­is­trate judge grant­ed both motions, find­ing defense coun­sel’s con­duct uneth­i­cal under two sep­a­rate rules: Local Rule 83.58.4(a)(4), pro­hibit­ing “dis­hon­esty, fraud, deceit or mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion;” and Local Rule 83.54.4, stat­ing “a lawyer shall not ... use meth­ods of obtain­ing evi­dence that vio­late the legal rights of person.”“ANDERSON v. HALE 159 F.Supp.2d 1116 (2001)

http://www.leagle.com/xmlResult.aspx?xmldoc=20011275159FSupp2d1116_11178.xml

He also attempt­ed to manip­u­late the wit­ness state­ments, per the mag­is­trate’s find­ings of fact-

“A 52-page tran­script of one con­ver­sa­tion showed defen­dants’ coun­sel steered the con­ver­sa­tion by elic­it­ing par­tic­u­lar respons­es to detailed ques­tions, lead­ing to more detailed ques­tions, to lure the wit­ness into damn­ing state­ments for lat­er use.” Ander­son v. Hale, 202 F.R.D. 548 (N.D.Ill. 2001),

That’s right–Glenn Green­wald, self-pro­claimed civ­il rights lawyer, vio­lat­ed the civ­il right of wit­ness­es. The New York Bar lat­er wrote a clar­i­fy­ing opin­ion on the ethics of said tap­ing, ref­er­enc­ing this case–

http://www2.nycbar.org/Publications/reports/show_html.php?rid=122

And of course, Glenn Green­wald thinks Matthew Hale is wrong­ly impris­oned by Pros­e­cu­tor Fitzger­ald.

“Mr. Green­wald, who said he believed that Mr. Hale was wrong­ly impris­oned, said he did not recall the exact mes­sage Ms. Hutch­e­son relayed to him, or the per­son it was intend­ed for, but that he had declined to deliv­er it. He called the mes­sage “a car­i­ca­ture of what a cod­ed mes­sage would be.””

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/09/national/09hale.html?pagewanted=print&position=

Let­ter to the Nation Mag­a­zine: Glenn Green­wald Is a Conservative/Libertarian Mole.

After lis­ten­ing to Chris Hayes and read­ing that one of his ref­er­ences to the sto­ry about Oba­ma assas­si­na­tions was Glenn Green­wald, I perused many of Green­wald’s anti-Oba­ma arti­cles clev­er­ly dis­guised as “civ­il lib­er­tar­i­an” and won­der how any­one in the pro­gres­sive move­ment can take Glenn Green­wald seri­ous­ly. Green­wald admits to being a civ­il lib­er­tar­i­an, much in the mold of Ayn Rand, Rand Paul and most lib­er­tar­i­ans on the far right. After doing a stint at a Wall Street cor­po­rate law firm (Wach­tel, Lip­ton) he strikes it out on his own by rep­re­sent­ing white suprema­cist Matthew Hale, who was the leader of the World Church of the Cre­ator, and is now doing forty years in prison for autho­riz­ing a hit on a fed­er­al judge. Green­wald has not writ­ten a sin­gle arti­cle that has been favor­able toward the Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion, and he was one of the lead­ing voic­es push­ing this dis­proven idea that Oba­ma is “the same as Bush” to try to under­mine Oba­ma’s sup­port in his pro­gres­sive base. The con­ser­v­a­tive mag­a­zine Forbes indi­cates Green­wald is “one of the 25 most influ­en­tial lib­er­als in the media,” despite his lib­er­tar­i­an views and admis­sion that he is not a lib­er­al.

With this back­drop, it does­n’t take a rock­et sci­en­tist to fig­ure out that Glenn Green­wald is a conservative/libertarian mole with­in the pro­gres­sive move­ment with the sole mis­sion of under­min­ing the move­ment. Specif­i­cal­ly, with respect to autho­rized killing of Al Qae­da oper­a­tives: since when does one need a tri­al when one admits in writ­ing con­tin­u­ous­ly that they are part of Al Qae­da and are found to be engaged in an oper­a­tional role in killing Amer­i­cans? When have we ever asked on the bat­tle­field whether one is autho­rized to defend one­self against the guy with the gun shoot­ing at you, who is dressed in ene­my gear and who has promised to kill you? Should we do as Green­wald sug­gests, and call a “time out” dur­ing the heat of bat­tle and have a civ­il tri­al to deter­mine whether this guy real­ly is what he has demon­strat­ed to be? I am all for due process when it make prac­ti­cal sense, but dur­ing the heat of bat­tle when some­one is active­ly try­ing to kill you, I think defend­ing one­self first in bat­tle and then defend­ing one­self in court lat­er if nec­es­sary appears to be the appro­pri­ate course of action. Maybe we should put Green­wald on the bat­tle­field and see if he real­ly thinks it’s prac­ti­cal to call a time-out and go to court. Only in the wildest fan­ta­sy of an obsessed lawyer would such a thought even be pos­si­ble, and Green­wald appears to be obsessed with sec­ond-guess­ing com­man­ders on the ground, even though he him­self could nev­er real­ly imag­ine what it is like to be on the bat­tle­field of war.

War sucks, and I at least agree with Green­wald that we should avoid war if nec­es­sary, and quick­ly bring to an end any out­stand­ing wars, as long as it is done respon­si­bly so we do not have to go back in after we leave. But Green­wald’s obses­sion with under­min­ing Oba­ma in this effort should make any pro­gres­sive pause, espe­cial­ly giv­en his right-wing back­ground, his inabil­i­ty to write a sin­gle pos­i­tive sto­ry about the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion and his inabil­i­ty to write about any­thing oth­er than civ­il lib­er­ties that pro­gres­sives care about.

Discussion

5 comments for “Snowden’s Ride, Part 6: Why Did Glenn Greenwald Represent Neo-Nazis Pro Bono?”

  1. Here is an inter­est­ing arti­cle from May, before the whole Snow­den thing blew up, that shows our guy Glenn was pret­ty light on Islam­ic ter­ror­ism.

    http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/133107/glenn-greenwald-terrorizes-logic

    Glenn Green­wald Ter­ror­izes Log­ic

    On the Guardian columnist’s response to the ter­ror attack in Lon­don
    By Zach Novetsky|May 24, 2013 11:18 AM|Comments: 0
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    (itvnews)

    When­ev­er a rad­i­cal Islamist com­mits a hor­rif­ic act of vio­lence or an act of ter­ror­ism, Glenn Green­wald is there with the same all-pow­er­ful expla­na­tion: it is our fault. More specif­i­cal­ly, it is the fault of any­one liv­ing in the Unit­ed States or any “loy­al, con­stant ally” state, as he put it on Twit­ter. Ter­ror­ists, it seems, have no agency.

    Wednes­day, on a crowd­ed street in Wool­wich, Lon­don, Michael Ade­bo­la­jo and a sec­ond indi­vid­ual behead­ed Lee Rig­by, a drum­mer in the 2nd Bat­tal­ion The Roy­al Reg­i­ment of Fusiliers. Both attack­ers are British cit­i­zens of Niger­ian descent. Ade­bo­la­jo con­vert­ed to Islam in 2003. At the time of his mur­der, Rig­by was not in uni­form. After butcher­ing Rig­by, Ade­bo­la­jo approached a bystander who record­ed the attack and said:

    “We swear by almighty Allah we will nev­er stop fight­ing you until you leave us alone. Your peo­ple will nev­er be safe. The only rea­son we have done this is because Mus­lims are dying by British sol­diers every day. This British sol­dier is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”

    “We apol­o­gize that women had to see this today, but in our lands our women have to see the same. You peo­ple will nev­er be safe. Remove your gov­ern­ment. They don’t care about you.”

    Instead of won­der­ing if these two butch­ers were part of a larg­er ter­ror­ist cell, Green­wald tells us that he is going to dis­cuss the “vital” mat­ter of whether this bar­bar­ic act should be con­sid­ered ter­ror­ism. Yes, it is “vital” to know whether behead­ing a drum­mer in the British army on a crowd­ed street in Lon­don is an act of ter­ror­ism. But fear not. Green­wald only asks rhetor­i­cal ques­tions so that he may pro­vide his own answers. And his answers are always sim­ple ones. Rig­by, the drum­mer in the 2nd Bat­tal­ion The Roy­al Reg­i­ment of Fusiliers, was a sol­dier. An act of ter­ror­ism must be car­ried out against civil­ians. A drum­mer in the 2nd Bat­tal­ion The Roy­al Reg­i­ment of Fusiliers is not a civil­ian. There­fore, behead­ing a drum­mer in the British army on a crowd­ed street in Lon­don can­not be an act of ter­ror­ism. For Green­wald, it real­ly is that sim­ple. Things are always that sim­ple.

    But things are sim­pler still for Green­wald. Does the fact that Rig­by was not wear­ing a uni­form com­pli­cate things at all? Of course not, because, Green­wald tells us, “the same is true for the vast bulk of killings car­ried out by the US and its allies over the last decade.” The US has even re-defined “mil­i­tant” to mean “any mil­i­tary-aged male in a strike zone.” Do you get it yet? It is not ter­ror­ism to behead a drum­mer in the British army on a crowd­ed street in Lon­don because the US and its allies do it too. It does not mat­ter that when the US and its allies car­ry out these killings in clear and rec­og­nized war­zones, they wear uni­forms to iden­ti­fy them­selves as com­bat­ants, where­as here, the two indi­vid­u­als were dressed in plain­clothes. It does not mat­ter that, accord­ing to the Laws of Armed Com­bat, Rig­by would not have been con­sid­ered a law­ful com­bat­ant because, among oth­er things, he was not wear­ing “fixed dis­tinc­tive emblems rec­og­niz­able at a dis­tance, such as uni­forms.” No, what Green­wald endors­es as sound log­ic is Adebojo’s brutish log­ic: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

    But Green­wald is not sat­is­fied with already hav­ing answered his own ques­tion. Green­wald goes fur­ther and enter­tains anoth­er pos­si­ble def­i­n­i­tion of ter­ror­ism: “any act of vio­lence designed to achieve polit­i­cal change, or more specif­i­cal­ly, to induce a civil­ian pop­u­la­tion to change their gov­ern­ment or its poli­cies of out fear of vio­lence.” Sure­ly, not even Green­wald can explain how this attack in Lon­don, done with an overt­ly polit­i­cal pur­pose (e.g. “the only rea­sons we killed this man is because Mus­lims are dying dai­ly” and “you peo­ple will nev­er be safe. Remove your gov­ern­ment”), fails to meet that def­i­n­i­tion of ter­ror­ism.

    Dear read­er, nev­er lose the abil­i­ty to be sur­prised.

    Green­wald tells us that if we pre­fer this def­i­n­i­tion, then the vast major­i­ty of vio­lent acts under­tak­en by the US and its allies over the last decade are like­wise exam­ples of ter­ror­ism. The US/UK “shock and awe” attack on Bagh­dad, the ongo­ing US drone attacks, the mas­sive air bomb­ings in World War II, all of these must also be ter­ror­ism.

    Why these things mat­ter in the con­text of two civil­ians (i.e. not States) who behead­ed a drum­mer in the British army on a crowd­ed street in Lon­don is unclear, because accord­ing to ter­ror­ism expert Bruce Hoff­man, “‘ter­ror­ism’ is under­stood to be vio­lence com­mit­ted by non-state enti­ties” (empha­sis mine). This may be a def­i­n­i­tion­al issue, but it helps explain why peo­ple are quick to call a vio­lent act com­mit­ted for polit­i­cal pur­pos­es by two civil­ians an act of ter­ror­ism, despite being unwill­ing to say the same when a state engages in a sim­i­lar act.

    Why Green­wald includes the attack on Bagh­dad as an act of ter­ror­ism despite the fact that, dur­ing the sec­ond bat­tle of Fal­lu­jah, civil­ians were evac­u­at­ed from the city in advance of the fight­ing (which last­ed sev­er­al weeks and was assist­ed by the US Marines), is unclear. (In oth­er words, those who chose to remain effec­tive­ly declared them­selves com­bat­ants.) Of course, there were fam­i­lies that did not or could not leave Fal­lu­jah dur­ing the evac­u­a­tion. But accord­ing to Michael Tot­ten, who spent a month in Fal­lu­jah dur­ing the surge, Marines spray-paint­ed the word “FAMILY” in red on the walls out­side their hous­es so no one would acci­den­tal­ly shoot them.

    Why Green­wald must look to famous­ly con­tro­ver­sial tac­tics employed in World War II–a war fought over six­ty years–when he claims to have avail­able the vast major­i­ty of vio­lent acts under­tak­en by the US and its allies over the last decade as exam­ples of ter­ror­ism is, like­wise, unclear.

    But do not over­think things. Every­thing is actu­al­ly sim­ple.

    The thing is, Greenwald’s pre­dictabil­i­ty is the only thing that is sim­ple. There are only so many times you can say, as Green­wald does in this col­umn, that “noth­ing about [his arti­cle] has any­thing to do with jus­ti­fi­a­bil­i­ty” before it has every­thing to do with jus­ti­fi­a­bil­i­ty. Near­ly every col­umn that Green­wald writes about Islamist ter­ror­ism is about how we brought ter­ror­ism upon our­selves, as if his­to­ry only began the moment we invad­ed Iraq and Afghanistan. Green­wald nev­er takes a moment to feel sor­row for the inno­cent vic­tims of Islamist ter­ror­ism in the West (or else­where, for that mat­ter) because he is too busy feel­ing an implaca­ble rage towards the West and the vic­tims of its wars, regard­less of the just­ness of those wars. Right after the Boston Marathon bomb­ing, for exam­ple, Green­wald engaged in this hall­mark vic­tim com­pe­ti­tion:

    “[W]hatever rage you’re feel­ing toward the per­pe­tra­tor of this Boston attack, that’s the rage in sus­tained form that peo­ple across the world feel toward the US for killing inno­cent peo­ple in their coun­tries. What­ev­er sad­ness you feel for yesterday’s vic­tims, the same lev­el of sad­ness is war­rant­ed for the inno­cent peo­ple whose lives are end­ed by Amer­i­can bombs.”

    The most loath­some part about Greenwald’s columns is that they quite lit­er­al­ly employ the very log­ic and pro­pa­gan­da tac­tics employed by al-Qae­da and its affil­i­ates. (If you do not believe me that I mean this lit­er­al­ly, click here and see how many of those ten he sat­is­fies.)

    Under­ly­ing Greenwald’s col­umn on the Lon­don behead­ing is a soft-racism that assumes that because the two attack­ers were Mus­lim, they can claim to be at war with the West and engage in attacks against the West as part of the “War on Ter­ror­ism.” What Green­wald mis­un­der­stands is that these two attack­ers were British cit­i­zens, not Afgha­nis, Iraqis, Pak­ista­nis, or Yeme­nis i.e. peo­ple who can make a claim that the West is at war with them. By assum­ing that these two British cit­i­zens could legit­i­mate­ly claim to be at war with Britain, Green­wald adopts the al-Qae­da nar­ra­tive that the West is at war with Islam, not with cer­tain states that hap­pen to be Islam­ic or have siz­able Mus­lim pop­u­la­tions. This is no exag­ger­a­tion. Green­wald approv­ing­ly cites a tweet from Michael Moore say­ing just that: “I am out­raged that we can’t kill peo­ple in oth­er coun­ties [sic] with­out them try­ing to kill us!” To repeat the point, then, these two ter­ror­ists who behead­ed a drum­mer were not part of “oth­er coun­tries.” They were British cit­i­zens. What else can we call this con­fla­tion of Mus­lims if not big­otry?

    Despite Greenwald’s repeat­ed insis­tence that he is not jus­ti­fy­ing Islamist ter­ror­ism, he reg­u­lar­ly does just that. He takes on the case of any ter­ror­ist pro bono from his com­fort­able home in Brazil. When his case is not going well, he resorts back to the time-test­ed tac­tic of blam­ing Israel. That is right. Israel is respon­si­ble for the behead­ing of a drum­mer in the British army on a crowd­ed street in Lon­don.

    It is not dif­fi­cult to see through Greenwald’s ele­men­tary log­ic, his many red her­rings, and sleight of hand tricks. No amount of West­ern wrong­do­ing can jus­ti­fy behead­ing a drum­mer in the British army on a crowd­ed street in Lon­don. This is ter­ror­ism, plain and sim­ple. And no amount of columns by Glenn Green­wald can change that.

    Posted by Vanfield | July 16, 2013, 4:54 pm
  2. Posted by Vanfield | July 18, 2013, 9:31 am
  3. Frank Gaffney inter­viewed Lee Strana­han recent­ly on the Snow­den case. What he has to say about it inter­sects to a large extent with the analy­sis you already made, Dave. It com­ple­ments your remarks with oth­er infor­ma­tion and details. In a nut­shell, Strana­han says that the Snow­den case is an “op” designed to hurt U.S. intel­li­gence. He believes that Snow­den went to work for Booz Allen Hamil­ton with the pre­cise inten­tion of doing what he did and that he is in cahoots with not only Green­wald but also Assange. Inter­view airs in seg­ment #4.

    http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2013/07/09/the-general-behind-egypts-military-coup/

    Posted by Claude | July 19, 2013, 7:04 pm
  4. Very dis­turb­ing and very con­fus­ing, for rel­a­tive­ly well-informed and well-inten­tioned peo­ple like myself that do not fol­low this stuff every day like you do, Dave. The neo-Nazi con­nec­tions are very, very bad. Much worse than I imag­ined. Green­wald is of Jew­ish ances­try, which makes it even more con­fus­ing. Thank you for shed­ding this new light on events, which I am afraid I could not have imag­ined.

    Posted by jg | September 7, 2013, 4:09 pm
  5. @JG–

    I’m going to re-record the sec­ond side of FTR #754 to include the new mate­r­i­al, as well as keep­ing the mate­r­i­al about “The Paulis­tin­ian Lib­er­tar­i­an Orga­ni­za­tion” in one show.

    The rea­son that I’m begin­ning the series of pro­grams about Snow­den’s Ride with the “drama­tis per­son­ae” is to famil­iar­ize the audi­ence with just WHO is doing these things.

    The analy­sis is long and mul­ti-lay­ered, com­plex.

    Suf­fice it to say, for present pur­pos­es, that NO ONE who did what Glenn Green­wald did could POSSIBLY be what he claims to be!

    This isn’t some­one who cares about the wel­fare of oth­ers.

    Best,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | September 7, 2013, 5:31 pm

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