The Future Is Here Today

The Future Is Here Today
Where Business, Nature and Leisure Provide An Ideal Setting For Living

Advertise in Almere-Digest

Advertising Options
Showing posts with label Glenn Greenwald. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Glenn Greenwald. Show all posts

December 11, 2014

Torture USA: “Corrupt, toxic and sociopathic”: Glenn Greenwald unloads on torture, CIA and Washington’s rotten soul - by Elias Isquith

It took years until the executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s torture report — which shows not only that the CIA’s torture regime was larger and more vicious than understood, but that the agency repeatedly lied about it to the White House and Congress — was finally released to the public.

But it only took hours before President Obama was once again urging the nation to look forward, not back. “Rather than another reason to refight old arguments,” read a White House statement, “I hope that today’s report can help us leave these techniques where they belong — in the past.” When members of the media asked whether that meant the White House considered torture to be ineffective, as the report claims, an anonymous official said Obama would not “engage” in the ongoing “debate.” On the issues of rape, waterboarding and induced hypothermia, apparently, reasonable minds can differ.

Glenn Greenwald, the Intercept’s Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and longtime critic of the war on terror, disagrees. “There’s no debate,” he told Salon. “Everything that we did,” he continued, “in terms of how we treated detainees, has [long] been viewed as morally vile and inexcusable and criminal.”

Greenwald has little doubt, however, that Washington will turn torture into yet another partisan squabble. It’s the go-to move, he says, when America’s political and media elite decide they’d rather look the other way. “That’s just the ritual Washington engages in,” Greenwald said.

Speaking with Salon from his home in Brazil (or at least we assumed as much, given the barking in the background) Greenwald discussed what surprised him about the summary, what we still don’t know, why expressions of shock and horror from Congress are disingenuous, how President Obama is culpable, too, and why America’s leaders are “sociopathic.” Our conversation is below(click on link below)  and has been edited for clarity and length.

Read more: EXCLUSIVE: “Corrupt, toxic and sociopathic”: Glenn Greenwald unloads on torture, CIA and Washington’s rotten soul - Salon.com

October 10, 2013

Netherlands: "The Dutch ‘have no idea’ about the scale of the US espionage activities in the Netherlands" says Glenn Greenwald

American journalist Glenn Greenwald, who helped publish reports on the US’s internet-based spying program, says the Dutch ‘have no idea’ about the scale of the US espionage activities in the Netherlands.

In an interview with the Volkskrant, Greenwald says the revelations about the situation in the Netherlands will be published soon.

‘I have a lot of information about the Netherlands but I cannot go into it yet,’ Greenwald said. 'The tone of debate in the Netherlands may well change when the revelations are published.'

Dutch reaction to the revelations has been fairly muted so far, the paper points out. In mid-September the government published its official reaction, stating that the US has now promised the EU to inform it about its spy programmes and welcoming US discussions about improving transparency.

This, the paper states, is in sharp contrast to the justice ministry’s recent report on cyber security which stated digital spying by foreign states poses a serious threat.

Read more in Volskrant