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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWho is this Glenn Greenwald guy?
ROBERT Greenwald I've heard of. He's made documentaries on Wal-Mart, Fox News, and the Koch Bros.
But I never heard of GLENN Greenwald until I started reading DU. What's all the whoop?
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rrneck
(17,671 posts)JaneyVee
(19,877 posts)In a literary sense, but they are blunt and get to the point.
LWolf
(46,179 posts)outside the beltway that status quo partisans love to hate.
Erich Bloodaxe BSN
(14,733 posts)He apparently tends to say things that are controversial, giving those that hate him fodder to attack him constantly.
Hah. Melissa Harris-Perry just actually made the same that Greenwald did in his latest controversial tweet, that US interventionism could actually be harmful as well as helpful, and could make things worse in Nigeria. I doubt she'll get viciously attacked like he did, though, because she moderated slightly, and didn't just assume we'd screw things up.
VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)oh and no....he did NOT couch what he said in "maybes" about intervention in the Nigerian Hostage situation....
Erich Bloodaxe BSN
(14,733 posts)He assumes that our intervention WILL make things worse, as opposed to possibly.
But I'm sure that if, as a response to US intervention, the rest of the kidnapped girls are immediately murdered to prevent a US rescue attempt, the people excoriating him will step up to apologize for immediately claiming that he might as well be a Nazi for foreseeing the possibility.
VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)now there is an understatement if I EVER saw one!
If some of the responses to GG's the Nigerian hostage situation on DU are to be believed...ANY help at all would b called "military action"
THAT cynical!
Erich Bloodaxe BSN
(14,733 posts)Because of the people we're sending to Nigeria, it sounds like 2/3 are from the military.
I'd have to reread his tweet, but I don't think it said the girls shouldn't be rescued; I think it said he believed that if the US got into it, we'd screw it up, based upon our history of interventionism in other countries.
VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)
Luminous Animal
(27,310 posts)Damansarajaya
(625 posts)He wrote for Salon.com, I get it.
But he also takes some right-wing positions apparently.
Luminous Animal
(27,310 posts)Four of them slamming the Bush admin. Several of which are best sellers. His new book about the surveillance state will be released next week.
He has won several awards for his reporting on the NSA.
He has raised money and ha endorsed Democrats running for congress.
Some of his right wing positions:
Expand social security
Single payer
100% public financing for elections
Freedom of the press
Also. He is a poopie head.
Damansarajaya
(625 posts)
arely staircase
(12,482 posts)
scarletwoman
(31,893 posts)and to always investigate for yourself.
Take, for example, the post above that says: he supported Bush's invasion of Iraq. This statement conveniently omits the fact that at the time of the Iraq invasion, Glenn Greenwald was not a public person, and had not written or published a single word for public consumption. He had a private law practice, was largely apolitical - he did not even vote - and, like the majority of Americans at that time, was content to assume that our Leaders knew what they were doing and would not actively set out to deceive the American people.
Read the Preface to his first book, "How Would A Patriot Act?: Defending American Values from a President Run Amok": http://www.bookbrowse.com/excerpts/index.cfm?fuseaction=printable&book_number=1812 - he fully explains his journey from trust to outrage.
Soon after our invasion of Iraq, when it became apparent that, contrary to Bush administration claims, there were no weapons of mass destruction, I began concluding, reluctantly, that the administration had veered far off course from defending the country against the threats of Muslim extremism. It appeared that in the great national unity the September 11 attacks had engendered, the administration had seen not a historically unique opportunity to renew a sense of national identity and cohesion, but instead a potent political weapon with which to impose upon our citizens a whole series of policies and programs that had nothing to do with terrorism, but that could be rationalized through an appeal to the nation's fear of further terrorist attacks.
And in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion came a whole host of revelations that took on an increasingly extremist, sinister, and decidedly un- American tenor. The United States was using torture as an interrogation tool, in contravention of legal prohibitions. We were violating international treaties we had signed, sending suspects in our custody for interrogation to the countries most skilled in human rights abuses. And as part of judicial proceedings involving Yaser Esam Hamdi, another U.S. citizen whom the Bush administration had detained with no trial and no access to counsel, George W. Bush began expressly advocating theories of executive power that were so radical that they represented the polar opposite of America's founding principles.
With all of these extremist and plainly illegal policies piling up, I sought to understand what legal and constitutional justifications the Bush administration could invoke to engage in such conduct. What I discovered, to my genuine amazement and alarm, is that these actions had their roots in sweeping, extremist theories of presidential power that many administration officials had been advocating for years before George Bush was even elected. The 9/11 attacks provided them with the opportunity to officially embrace those theories. In the aftermath of the attack, senior lawyers in the Bush Justice Department had secretly issued legal memoranda stating that the president can seize literally absolute, unchecked power in order to defend the country against terrorism. To assert, as they did, that neither Congress nor the courts can place any limits on the president's decisions is to say that the president is above the law. Once it became apparent that the administration had truly adopted these radical theories and had begun exerting these limitless, kinglike powers, I could no longer afford to ignore them.
I hope you will go to the link and read the whole preface, and see for yourself how twisted and deceitful the statement, he supported Bush's invasion of Iraq. actually is.
OilemFirchen
(7,143 posts)Stop the flow of "illegal immigrants" (for which he later "apologized" by stating "That said, I do think illegal immigration is a serious problem: having millions of people live without legal rights; having a legal scheme that is so pervasively disregarded breeds contempt for the rule of law; virtually every country - not just the U.S. insists on border control because having a manageable immigration process is vital on multiple levels."
Support a (random) billionaire for President.
Celebrate Citizens United.
Investigate BENGHAZI!!!
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)He's never argued for tax cuts, he's never argued for increased military spending, he's never argued for restrictions on abortion, he's never argued for restrictions on gay marriage.
What he has done is criticize Obama's right-wing policies, and that make people angry.
QC
(26,371 posts)randome
(34,845 posts)...because he says stuff bluntly without regard to how complex the real world is. Celebrating him is like a craving for chocolate that some indulge in. The rest of us think he's a nobody.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]There is nothing you can't do if you put your mind to it.
Nothing.[/center][/font][hr]
Damansarajaya
(625 posts)People like Krugman, Reich, Dean Baker, Sy Hersch, Andrew Sullivan etc. I read often.
randome
(34,845 posts)So it's good to hear the opinion of an 'outsider' like yourself. And welcome to DU! 
[hr][font color="blue"][center]There is nothing you can't do if you put your mind to it.
Nothing.[/center][/font][hr]
Erich Bloodaxe BSN
(14,733 posts)VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)and I have not noticed the same "GG lovefest" as I have seen on here DU!
Erich Bloodaxe BSN
(14,733 posts)(in several accounts(edit for clarity: serially, I did not use multiple accounts at the same time) , as I moved from semi-pseudonymous to pseudonymous to finally totally out in the open) and there are indeed both pro-and anti-Greenwald factions onsite. There's a pretty major divide between the centrists and the lefties on DK, and the people who hate Greenwald there usually align very well with the centrist faction, and the reverse. I haven't paid attention over there for the latest flap, as I'm taking a break from DK, and realizing that I've wasted far too much time paying attention to meta. And really, Greenwald love or hate is meta.
VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)
KG
(28,751 posts)even though that's not his job, and that makes him a poopie-head, as stated above...
VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)
ucrdem
(15,512 posts)Coulda been a contender, too. Shame.
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)Who, by libertarianism's nature, writes articles that civil libertarians here agree with sometimes.
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)You cannot provide a single link showing Greenwald supporting Libertarian policies.
Please stop being disingenuous.
JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)predictably. The atmosphere here around the subject is so poisoned that even his supporters respond in that context.
Today he's first of all known internationally as the journalist who first broke the Snowden revelations.
Just check out his current online mag, The Intercept, and delve back into his past work if you need more.
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/
Erich Bloodaxe BSN
(14,733 posts)But the love him/hate him fight was on for years before Snowden came around.
Crunchy Frog
(26,578 posts)Response to Damansarajaya (Original post)
Post removed
grasswire
(50,130 posts)....because the endorphins would significantly improve their mood.
Douglas Carpenter
(20,226 posts)Administrations. He has the goofy false equivalency idea that if something was wrong during the Bush Administration then it is also wrong during the Obama Administration.
