*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Glenn-Greenwald-Blasts-Israel-s-Rationale-for-Seizing-Gaza-A

@rougy, Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

You're at Anger. Stop.

For everyone else, I'm finding Glenn Greenwald gets my gold star for best commentary on this:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/06/iraq

The real problem this exposes isn't that the guys in the Apache did something out of the ordinary. It's that they didn't.

>> ^NetRunner:
>> ^chilaxe:
I could get behind liberalism if there was a movement within it to hold accountable those fellow liberals who sabotage the cause.
Liberals have plenty of sites like 'Crooks and Liars" or Mediawatch to keep an eye on the excesses of conservatives... why can't they do the same to keep an eye on the excesses of fellow liberals?
Such a movement is certainly under way. I think Chris Dodd would have been primaried if he didn't resign (incidentally, you should rent Michael Moore's Capitalism -- he trashes Dodd pretty nicely in there and raises more than a few doubts about Democratic resolve). Charlie Rangel is a popular target too. Tim Geithner and Larry Summers, etc.
If you want a liberal taking Democrats to task with no holds barred, try Glenn Greenwald's blog. I read it occasionally, but most of the time I find him far too depressing.
I don't read Firedoglake anymore, because they've, IMO, gone off the deep end (Jane Hamsher was pushing people to work together with the tea parties to kill HCR once the public option got stripped), but if you're looking for progressives critical of Democrats, they're another good resource.
Personally, I'm a big fan of DailyKos. It's probably the biggest progressive community on the net, so often it's the battleground upon which most left vs. left fights are played out. The main content is geared towards organizing activism and electoral strategy, and commentary on the day's political events, but the Diaries are usually a grab-bag of all kinds of interesting topics, not all of which are political.
They're starting to shift from a focus on "more Democrats" to "better Democrats", but I'm not sure how many opportunities we'll have for that in 2010. Most of those that they've talked about are House races, or Arlen Specter's ongoing primary.


That's good to hear that there are left vs. left debates. However, are these mostly just folks on the far-left of the political bell curve 'pushing harder even if it means we lose'? As long as that's the dominant liberal paradigm, they don't seem to me to be reliable societal partners who can be reasoned with.

That might sound very uninvolved, but I think any intellectuals who go into politics (i.e. not Moore, Olbermann, Huffington etc.) will find that the tail wags the dog: if intellectual figures don't tell the liberal masses what they want to hear, the masses will just find figures who will. Olbermann saying "I'm not a liberal; I'm an American" seems to be a good example of that kind of permanent intellectual simplicity.

I suppose this is an inevitable macrohistorical problem... perhaps any intelligent species on any planet would face it... the necessary legacy of human evolution is that the kind of interest in cognitive complexity that's advantageous in a complex modern society wasn't sufficiently advantageous during the last 10,000 or 100,000 years to be widespread today. In other words, any collection of social norms that must appeal to 50% of the population can only achieve a limited level of intellectual accuracy.

The take-home lesson for me is: that means an individual with a greater level of intellectual accuracy can out-predict them, and thus position themselves in the right place at the right time (for whatever opportunity is targeted).

>> ^chilaxe:
I could get behind liberalism if there was a movement within it to hold accountable those fellow liberals who sabotage the cause.
Liberals have plenty of sites like 'Crooks and Liars" or Mediawatch to keep an eye on the excesses of conservatives... why can't they do the same to keep an eye on the excesses of fellow liberals?

Such a movement is certainly under way. I think Chris Dodd would have been primaried if he didn't resign (incidentally, you should rent Michael Moore's Capitalism -- he trashes Dodd pretty nicely in there and raises more than a few doubts about Democratic resolve). Charlie Rangel is a popular target too. Tim Geithner and Larry Summers, etc.

If you want a liberal taking Democrats to task with no holds barred, try Glenn Greenwald's blog. I read it occasionally, but most of the time I find him far too depressing.

I don't read Firedoglake anymore, because they've, IMO, gone off the deep end (Jane Hamsher was pushing people to work together with the tea parties to kill HCR once the public option got stripped), but if you're looking for progressives critical of Democrats, they're another good resource.

Personally, I'm a big fan of DailyKos. It's probably the biggest progressive community on the net, so often it's the battleground upon which most left vs. left fights are played out. The main content is geared towards organizing activism and electoral strategy, and commentary on the day's political events, but the Diaries are usually a grab-bag of all kinds of interesting topics, not all of which are political.

They're starting to shift from a focus on "more Democrats" to "better Democrats", but I'm not sure how many opportunities we'll have for that in 2010. Most of those that they've talked about are House races, or Arlen Specter's ongoing primary.

Yeah, I found the link and have started watching. Given that it goes for over an hour, i'll have to find time to get through it. It's amazing enough that the experiment has been undertaken by the Portuguese, but it's even more incredible that it's not all over the news across the world. doesn't fit with the storyline, so let's just ignore the facts...

In reply to this comment by Skeeve:
Anytime. If you are still interested in the topic check out http://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=5887 for a video of a talk given by Glenn Greenwald about the same subject.

In reply to this comment by kymbos:
Scratch that - it didn't like firefox, but it works in IE. Fascinating post, and very interesting findings. Thanks!

Anytime. If you are still interested in the topic check out http://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=5887 for a video of a talk given by Glenn Greenwald about the same subject.

In reply to this comment by kymbos:
Scratch that - it didn't like firefox, but it works in IE. Fascinating post, and very interesting findings. Thanks!

>> ^Farhad2000:
Am amazed by the comments here.
What if there was government suppressed the original Abu Ghraib photos?


They tried to, and failed.
---


What if what Bush doing this and not Obama?

Bush is a war-mongering torture fetishest. Obama is not. There's definitely an infinite difference. Bush tried to keep everything secret, and failed. Obama is acknowledging what's in these photos, and taking a different approach than you or I or Glenn Greenwald would take.

But the fact of the matter is, this is FOIA stuff, and at a certain point, Obama doesn't control their release. It's entirely possible that Obama is specifically taking this stance now, all the while knowing they will be released, but he comes out in the end as not the America-hater that would so easily be slapped on him.
---


Do you condone then the CIA destrcution of the torture videotapes as well?

Of course not and I have no idea why you'd equate the two. Obama isn't destroying these photographs, Bush destroyed the tapes.
---


What kind of precedent does this set? Any time Americans do something wrong and its damaging to a certain set of people they should be allowed to suppress it?


I think you're blowing out of proportion what I and others here have stated. I'm not personally seeking the concealment of them. I'm trying to take Obama at face value, and figure out the issue, on both sides.
---


I wanted these photos to be released so the evidence on prosecuting the people responsible for these policies would increase.

You don't need to release photographic evidence to the public and media at large in order to prosecute. Even Glen Greenwald understands that.
---

It sounds like you are all buying the Fox spin about this being leveled at those carrying out the orders and not those who put these orders in place.


OK so, saying "I'm on the fence about this issue" and then trying to have a conversation about it is equal to "buying the Fox spin"??? WTF?

That's pretty out there dude.

OK, but it's a lie.

I suggest people read more into this story before believing what's being fed to us.


from Glenn Greenwald:
"That is simply not what happened. What actually happened is the opposite. It was Dodd who did everything possible -- including writing and advocating for an amendment -- which would have applied the limitations on executive compensation to all bailout-receiving firms, including AIG, and applied it to all future bonus payments without regard to when those payments were promised. But it was Tim Geithner and Larry Summers who openly criticized Dodd's proposal at the time and insisted that those limitations should apply only to future compensation contracts, not ones that already existed. The exemption for already existing compensation agreements -- the exact provision that is now protecting the AIG bonus payments -- was inserted at the White House's insistence and over Dodd's objections"

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/03/17/dodd/index.html

Personally, I think this is one more moment where Jon Stewart proves that he's a better journalist than the so-called pros.

This is perhaps the central theme of what his show is really about. Pushing the media to actually do their job -- finding out what's really going on and telling people about it. It's a shame he's so locked into the mode of comedy, I'd love to give him his own 24 hour news network to run, I think he'd destroy the others.

Here's a great Glenn Greenwald article about the interview, and how Stewart's criticism could've been leveled at most of the news giants over the last decade (or more).

It's not about watching Cramer squirm, it's about making it clear to the people who deliver our news that this isn't some fucking game, and that they have a responsibility to tell people what our nation's powers are really doing behind the scenes, not just taking their word for things.

For me personally there is no greater litmus test for President Obama to fulfill then to revoke and repel the civil rights infractions passed through the 8 years of Bush rule under the guise of fighting terrorism.

Glenn Greenwald has a insightful discussion with the executive director of the ACLU Anthony Romero about the steps towards restoration of core liberties. From Salon.com:

The ACLU recently released a detailed plan for the restoration of core liberties in America under an Obama administration. We discuss the most important priorities for civil libertarians in reversing the anti-constitutional abuses of the past, as well as strategies for holding Obama to his campaign pledges for doing so.

- Glenn Greenwald: Salon Radio: Anthony Romero.

Glenn Greenwald on Salon had this to say:

"This is actually so dumb that it hurts... The First Amendment is actually not that complicated. It can be read from start to finish in about 10 seconds. It bars the Government from abridging free speech rights. It doesn’t have anything to do with whether you’re free to say things without being criticized, or whether you can comment on blogs without being edited...

If anything, Palin has this exactly backwards, since one thing that the First Amendment does actually guarantee is a free press. Thus, when the press criticizes a political candidate and a Governor such as Palin, that is a classic example of First Amendment rights being exercised, not abridged."

The latest cover of the American Conservative depicts Rudy Giuliani in a fascist uniform. Ali Eteraz notes “it’s interesting that paleoconservatives feel this strongly against Rudy.”
rudy

Glenn Greenwald has a piece in the magazine arguing that, as NYC mayor, Giuliani “developed a reputation as a power-hungry, dissent-intolerant authoritarian, obsessed with secrecy and expanding his own power.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/12/22/rudy-the-authoritarian/