More questions about Glenn Greenwald.

While previous suspicions about Greenwald had been put on to a low simmer further worrying signs that Greenwald is not nearly as liberal or progressive as one might like to pretend. Ina magazine interview he has mooted support for a Libertarian presidential candidate.

Its well worth a read, one really does have to wonder how progressive Greenwald is.

Edit: Forgot to say at the bottom of that blog post it is also highlighted how anti-immigrant he is.

Why the right hates the TSA

Following up on a previous article which gained the ire of Glenn Greenwald Yasha Levine and Mark Ames now give a more in depth explanation of why the negative actions of the TSA suddenly became a conservative cause celebre last year.

I don't like what the TSA does but I do not labour under any illusion that right wingers care about civil liberty issues at all. They simply would prefer to return to privatised airport security at which point they would immediately become deeply concerned about the need to maintain security, even at the cost of civil liberties if necessary.

This is just another issue of shooting the messenger. The people who work for the TSA deserve decent working conditions just like everyone else. Yes they are the ones on the front line doing embarrassing and unpleasant things to everyday air travellers but they aren't the ones setting DHS policy or passing legislation that restricts civil liberties. If liberals and leftists were smart they'd direct their anger at the politicians and senior civil servants pushing these policies, not the low paid grunts on the front line.

So really do give the new article a read.

Another Hero Sullied.

Please note nearly none of this is original research and just me parroting stuff Mark Ames and Yasha Levine dug up in case that wasn't obvious.

I liked Glenn Greenwald... maybe I still do, I'm not sure. He certainly has done some good stuff in the past but recent events have certainly raised some questions.

Lets go back to the beginning. About a week ago self described Libertarian John Tyner wrote a blog post about an unpleasant encounter with the TSA that he just so happened to have set record devices up on his person before it occurred. This post got a surprisingly large amount of coverage very rapidly. This wasn't especially suspicious because the TSA are far from popular and from time to time the internet does throw up unlikely success stories.

Alas Mark Ames and Yasha Levine of Exiled.com dug up the fact those trumpeting this issue had alterior motives. In short various libertarian Koch Brothers minions were using this as a chance not to push for less security at airports, but privatised security at airports. Their article (which you should read) attracted an awful lot of criticism very quickly. Not just from right wing flaks either; renowned liberal luminary, techno-fetistist and Steam Punk fan Cory Doctorow was among the liberal voices screeching about at the duo for daring to question the narrative of their little pet project. Alas though the most prominent and widely heard critic was Glenn Greenwald.

Greenwald's article is full of very annoyed accusations of baseless criticism on Levine and Ames's part. He then goes on to accuse them of being hardline democrat supporters moved into action by anger at Tyner upsetting Barrack Obama, their favourite person ever's plans.

With a Koch-related mind like that, the next thing you know, Tyner will be calling for endless war in the Muslim world, escalated civilian-slaughtering drone strikes, a covert war in Yemen, war crimes trials for child soldiers, and due-process-free life imprisonment and presidential assassinations. Then maybe he'll decide he can become a Good Democrat and will be able to remove the cloud of suspicion that, in the eyes of these Nation writers, hangs over him.

to quote one of several instances.

Yet if one were to do the most cursory of research, say a single search on their website for the word Obama you would realise that they are in no way democratic party allies, fans or even well wishers. Still this isn't the end of the world, Greenwald is a busy man and while Exiled.com is cool they're hardly big fish in the media pond. It is a shame he is wholly unaware of the fact Ames and Levine, through journalistic hard work, were the first to break the news that the Tea Party is an Astro Turfed movement, a sham funded by Billionaire libertarianism proponents the Koch Brothers but you can't expect him to know everything.

Ames and Levine provided a response to Greenwald's letter on The Nation's website which Greenwald then responded to again in Update III of his article. In this Greenwald defends his strident attack on the origianl article and his ignoring the wider facts of Libertarian influence on the anti-TSA movement by claiming he merely wanted to defend the innocence of John Tyner. Which is kinda nice if rather myopic, sure the inference Ames and Levine made about Tyner is perhaps questionable but the wider issue of the right's support for the anti-TSA movement being about privatisation and not loosening of security is noteworthy and perhaps something he should've noted in his attack?

Well it turns out Glenn Greenwald has good reason to be unwilling to criticise the Koch Brothers in regards to Airport Security issues. He wrote a report for the CATO INSTITUTE about Airport security. You can read the report by Glenn Greenwald of the CATO Institute here: http://www.cato-unbound.org/2010/08/09/glenn-greenwald/the-digital-surveillance-state-vast-secret-and-dangerous/. Just in case you are unaware the CATO institute is one of the Koch Brother's principle propaganda mills and sources of succour for academics shills who'll spout the glories of Libertarianism. Greenwald has taken their dime at least once before too.

So what conclusion can we draw from one of the most prominent liberal voices in the US being willing to take at least a sip from the Koch Bros' teat in regards to his strident defence of John Tyner (and just so happening to poo poo the other important criticisms of the Kochs by association?). Well essentially I think theres two main possibilities. Firstly his pride and desire to appear academically consistent have caused him to persist with the CATO point of view and defend other proponents of it, nobody likes to be called on their mistakes and Ames and Levine's usual offensive tone doesn't bring out the best in people generally.

Secondly the money and access his connection to the CATO institute brings to him has lead him to compromise some of his values, maybe he even feels going along with the Libertarian Agenda, with all the media attention and money it is currently getting, can further causes he believes in more than it harms them. In that case attacking relatively minor investigative journalists he hasn't heard of (or at least thats the impression he gives) to further his goals against a creeping surveillance state may be a tradeoff he thinks worth making. Making deals with the devil is seldom wise in any case.

Neither scenario is great but hopefully it is the former.

So in conclusion while I think Greenwald still does a lot of good work my respect for him has dropped considerably and there are major questions hanging over him.

I took two days to write this and in that the hornets' nest seems to have been stirred up even further. Another person mentioned in the original nation article, Peter Eyre, got himself in a tizzy about having some light shined on his activities. He also revealed his ideology is a perverse corporate friendly version of Anarchism oh and he rounds out with a threat of violence against Mark Ames (Yasha Levine is below his notice):

Let me know if you ever want to arm wrestle. And I know Josiah Neff on that page said he’d go a couple rounds of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu if you’re interested.

Sadly the liberal mainstream is siding with these assholes over Levine and Ames because they don't want to acknowledge they got played over hating the TSA.

The Skynet of stealing.

This is finance so I can't really speak to the content but I get the feeling it is important. Essentially the big banks are using computer programs to manipulate and control the market. Happily the US Govt is merrily looking the other way about this because it worked out so well last time.

Jonny linked by a different article about this a long time ago but I forgot to link it so thanks to him for at least making me aware this is an important issue.

A case study of a corrupt occupation.

John Dolan is one of the good ones. He is a bitter and pessimistic man but such are the wages of speaking truth to power. People far better informed than me have suggested he has a further curse, he is an unrecognised artistic genius, doomed like Van Gogh or Nietzsche to have his literary work recognised only after his death. I mean sure you can be high minded and stuff but I'd imagine all things being equal those with gifts would like to be recognised in their lifetime, especially by young attractive people and rich people of any shape size or colour. I mean damn, who wouldn't?

He was one of the main people behind The Exile and is still an occasional contributor to The Exiled. While he did a lot of good work under his own name his most popular stuff was probably when he posed as http://exiledonline.com/cat/war-nerd/>The War Nerd where he did quite probably the best analysis of modern conflicts you're likely to read, stripped of jingoism and bolstered with the context we're seldom provided with. To actually make a living, for the powers that be make sure dissent isn't profitable, he worked in academia all over the world until a few years ago while at the University of Victoria he was fired for encouraging students to criticise George Monbiot. Now I'm not sure of the specifics and since I like Monbiot I'd like to hope he didn't personally push for the dismissal but who knows. He wrote of the trials of extreme poverty in North America and one can thus understand how he came to be employed at the corrupt right wing institution that is the America University of Iraq.

He got fired after working there for little over a year but he experienced enough to write a lengthy article about how messed up the place was. I feel little need to criticise a formerly destitute man for selling out in order to eat. The way things work you either sell out or start off rich enough not to need to worry about an income, the game is rigged. Indeed the concept of selling out seems to me to mean you get nice and rich off of betraying your ideals but you don't go into academia to get rich (except maybe if you're an American sports coach):


Bear that in mind when reading the article for if an institution like a university which one generally wouldn't associate with a bonanza of graft ("suck on it losers, I got three of my monographs bought by the library!") you can begin to guess how terrible the corruption and fraud is in occupation institutions that are associated with fabulous wealth. That is not to say the American University of Iraq is simply a cautionary hint to the wider Iraq situation, it the people who are paying considerable amounts of money to learn there are being shafted by the cronyism and blind right wing ideology touting of a faculty so cowed and intellectually timid as to no longer really be able to call themselves academics.

Still when it comes time to bomb Iran we will likely sell the Kurds out to gain Turkish support, and dead Kurds wont need universities.

It cannot be over emphasised how similar late capitalism and feudalism are.

You hear people talking about a new aristocracy or how certain behaviour is "medieval" and you understand it as hyperbole. After all this is an age of progress ever moving forward and regression is a bogey man to be rolled out to demonise a policy things aren't really getting worse. But of course that isn't the case, things are getting worse and anyway the past is always with us.

Nonetheless the feudal nature of the actions of the elite slip by unnoticed because it is very unpleasant to realise just how undemocratic and deeply unfair their attitudes and wielded power are. Mark Ames has profiled one of the Koch brothers' evangelical propagandists and I'll be damned if I can tell the difference between the patronage system he operates within and a medieval clergyman retained by a local lord to keep the peasants in line.

MLK's plagarism and lies by omission.

This article examines the mainstream in general and NYT in particular's favourite conspiracy denier Gerald Posner. Oh hes also a massive plagarist and a self proclaimed thieving cocksucker but now he is no long a "journalist" and instead works PR for some of Hamid Karazi's relatives including Ahmed Wali Karzai a drug lord on the CIA's payroll.

So really it would be quite a leap to assume his popular lone gunman theory books about the assassinations of JFK and MLK could in any way be deliberate pieces of propaganda supporting the US government's line on the issue!


Yet this is exactly what the article does!. It is quite convincing that this thieving cocksucker omitted evidence that calls into question his conclusion that the official story that James Earl Ray killed MLK was wholly correct. The author does a much better job of explaining it than I could so you should read it.

What idiots thought about Election

John Dolan, acknowledged by people who know a lot better than me to be perhaps the greatest writer of his generation, lets us enjoy a little schadenfreud thanks to Amazon user reviews. He also liked The Big Lewbowski so take that haters.

This is what proper journalism looks like.

Enjoy a rare chance to see such a precious thing. The Exiled explains it better than I can but I will give you an interesting question to ponder. Aside from simple whineyness, you have to wonder how much of the reason she complained Ratigan was a bad moderator was because she was, like most of us, used to "journalists" weakly accepting both sides of the argument as equally valid and how much it was because she believed it is bad journalism to disagree with her. Now obviously you lean towards the latter but she is so deer in the headlights by the end of things you do have to wonder.

Mark Ames on the Anti-I.M.F Protests In Washington D.C. April 20th 2000

Its depressing as fuck but its still interesting to see how the elite stiffle dissent in the US. The IMF and World Bank are evil as all hell and yet they're still getting to impose their wholesale destruction of the poor, just look how they got their tentacles further into Pakistan last week.

The US Federal Reserve does not know where over $9 TRILLION of its' money is.

The title says it all really, here is a link to an article and a youtube about how the woman in charge of auditing the Federal Reserve (Inspector General Elizabeth Coleman) has no idea where the money is.

(Fake Edit: I just realised this is from May last year, I assumed it was new because The Exiled linked it today. still if the mainstream media didn't report this in the first place its news to me and unless proof is provided this is now fixed I'm not going to be kind enough to make the assumption for them.)

"Poor people need to bootstrap some water" - the anglosphere

In 1943 a dude named Abraham Maslow created something called the hierarchy of needs it was an attempt to map what a human being requires for positive mental health. Its' most famous outcome was a pyramid diagram showing the different levels of requirements people have to be happy, the base being the most basic, the tip being more esoteric:


You'll note (unsurprisingly) that water is included as one of the most basic human needs, we of course need it regularly to function in the most basic mechanical sense. This however, according to the English speakers of the world, doesn't mean the poor have a basic right to water or at least their political donors' basic right to profit trumps the need for water.

There is a draft resolution currently facing political opposition from pretty much every English speaking country in the west simply because it would limit their ability to profit off of the sale of drinking water to citizens and of course their multinational allies' ability to rip off the rest of the world.

God damn its good to be an Anglo.

this link was found on The Exiled