I read about this guy and think he may be worth knowing.
"Glenn Greenwald, the Bane of Their Resistance"
A leftist journalist’s bruising crusade against establishment Democrats—and their Russia obsession.
by By Ian Parker 3 Sep 2018 Issue
"Greenwald, a former lawyer who, in 2013, was one of the reporters for a Pulitzer Prize-winning series in the Guardian on Edward Snowden’s disclosures about the National Security Agency, is a longtime critic, from the left, of centrist and liberal policymakers and pundits. During the past two years, he has further exiled himself from the mainstream American left by responding with skepticism and disdain to reports of Russian government interference in the 2016 Presidential election. On Twitter, where he has nearly a million followers, and at the Intercept, the news Web site that he co-founded five years ago, and as a frequent guest on “Democracy Now!,” the daily progressive radio and TV broadcast, Greenwald has argued that the available evidence concerning Russian activity has indicated nothing especially untoward [OK, not exactly correct, but it is opinion. Russia hacking not "untoward?" Ha! No, of course, Russia was just joking about messing with America's democracy.]; he has declared that those who claim otherwise are in denial about the ineptitude of the Democrats and of Hillary Clinton, and are sometimes prone to McCarthyite hysteria. "
Maybe the man is premature, writing/speaking with NO evidence to support his position while claiming others have no evidence for their position. Maybe he should wait for the evidence?
"Greenwald has experienced his own share of criticism, but is not known for showing kindness to critics. Michael Hayden, the former director of the C.I.A. and the N.S.A., has written that debating him was like looking “the devil in the eye.” Leading American progressives—speaking off the record, and apologizing for what they describe as cowardice—call Greenwald a bully and a troll. One told me that “he makes everything war.” The spouse of one of Greenwald’s friends visualizes him as the angry emoji."
OK, Greenwald is intense. That is OK. He's smart. I want to know more.
"Greenwald’s model will satisfy readers, on Twitter and elsewhere, to the extent that they recognize the same malignancy, or agent of oppression. Many might find this kind of framing appropriate, and inspiringly forthright, in a discussion of policing in Ferguson, Missouri, or of the American meat industry’s efforts to thwart animal-rights activists—a current interest of Greenwald’s. Many readers, though certainly not all, could also agree that Edward Snowden had engaged in a courageous insurgency."
Complex man, complex opinions. US intelligence people, CI, are warmongers to Greenwald.
"He has tweeted, “I don’t regard the F.B.I. as an upholder of the rule of law. I regard it as a subverter of it.” Greenwald told me, “Robert Mueller was the fucking F.B.I. chief who rounded up Muslims for George Bush after 9/11, and now, if you go to hacker conferences, there are people who wear his image, like he’s Che Guevara, on their shirt.” Maddow and other liberals may show respect to the former C.I.A. director John Brennan when he accuses Trump of colluding with Russia, but Greenwald’s view is that Brennan, who sanctioned extraordinary rendition, should be shunned."
Complex, but maybe too extreme when it comes to finding ways to defend our democracy, with all its warts compared to other world democracies, accusing our only hope of saving this American democracy, the FBI and CIA, with no options to fix it. We need the FBI and the CIA, and, buy the way, the media.
"In 2011, Greenwald published a book whose title—“With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful”—could serve as a headline for much of what he had written in the previous six years."
OK. Good title. Greenwald seems to understand America's penchant to support the rich.
Read this piece folks - I love it!
"Greenwald told me, “I don’t think that, once Trump leaves office, we’re going to have a revolution in law where rich and powerful people are going to be held accountable in the way that poor people are.” Trump is a criminal, he said, surrounded by “fifth-tier grifters” who, under normal circumstances, would be “generating PowerPoints to defraud pensioners.” But most public expressions of distress about corruption in Trump’s circle struck him as a “pretense.” He said, “The people who hate Trump the most are the people who have been running Washington for decades. It’s not so much that they’re bothered by his corruption—they’re bothered by his inability to prettify and mask it.” "
Greenwald is gay by the way.
"He identified as poor, in part because his house was uncared for: roaches, holes in the couch. And, when he began to understand that he was gay, he felt that others judged him to be “radically broken and diseased and evil.”"
Greenwald has a strong and right strategy to defend gays.
"Greenwald noted that some gay teens respond to persecution by assimilating, or by escaping into the arts. He then said, “My strategy was: you have waged war on me, and now I’m going to wage war back on you. I had to hide who I was, because it was shameful and wrong. And I wanted to make them feel the same way—‘No, you’re shameful and wrong.’ ”"
The man is smart! Did I already say that?!
"Greenwald and Lake debated the case for American bombing in Syria, as a response to a recent chemical attack in Douma, which had killed dozens of people. (The next day, U.S. missiles hit three targets in Syria.) Lake favored intervention; Greenwald did not. He briefly acknowledged the scale of human suffering, calling it “a problem in the world that’s really horrendous,” but he emphasized, as Chomsky has done, that a humanitarian rationale for American armed intervention was “generally the excuse that’s used” for geopolitical maneuvering."
Greenwald comes around to accept Russia hacked the 2016 election?
"Upon the release of Mueller’s July indictments, which contained detailed descriptions of Russian methods, Greenwald tweeted that “indictments are extremely easy to obtain & are proof of nothing.” He urged “skepticism toward the claims of prosecutors who have turned the U.S. into a penal state, and security state agencies which have turned the U.S. into a militaristic imperial state.” After Michael Tracey, another journalist who is largely dismissive of Trump-Russia reporting, wrote mockingly about the respect being paid to “our Lord and savior Mueller,” Greenwald expressed fellowship by noting that the act of “asking for evidence, and refusing to believe it until you see it, is literally heretical.”
A few days later, on the phone, Greenwald had news. He had “talked to a bunch of people and figured out what I thought, in the most rational way possible,” and now regarded the indictments as genuine evidence of Russian hacking—the first he’d seen in two years. To think otherwise, he said, “you’d pretty much have to believe that Mueller and his team fabricated it all out of whole cloth, which I don’t believe is likely.”"
Thoughts on the 2016 election where Greenwald felt Sanders would have been a good option - he did not vote.
"Greenwald, who didn’t vote in 2016, and who sees Bernie Sanders as the best likely candidate for 2020, later told me that, compared with current conditions, a Clinton Presidency would have been “better in some ways, and worse in other ways.” He referred to the likelihood that Clinton would have pursued military action in Syria. Trump’s election, he said, had energized public debate about “what kind of country we should be.”"
The end - the overall article is extremely long. Read it for more details on this interesting man.
