L’Affaire Greenwald

Alan: And you’re still working for Beaverbrook [Lord Beaverbrook, the most influential media owner of his time]?

Peter: Well, yes, I’m still working for the Beaver, if work’s the right word; don’t get me wrong, Alan-- I haven’t changed, working on the paper hasn’t really altered my outlook… Just because my name’s at the top of the column you mustn’t think that I had any connection with it… I’m working on the novel, you know. One day that novel’s going to come out and blast the lid off the whole filthy business-- name the names, show up Fleet Street [once the center of UK newspaper publishing] for what it really is… Of course if you are going to write a really accurate novel, you’ve got to join the people you are writing about… I am going through a sort of research period at the moment. There are about ten of us on the paper-- young, progressive liberal people who don’t believe a word of what we are writing… Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, Dudley Moore, Beyond the Fringe, 1961

By any measure, Glenn Greenwald is an important journalist. He has won numerous awards, published best sellers, and enjoys a large following, particularly for someone taking unconventional positions.

Greenwald is a classic, but anachronistic Bill of Rights liberal, of the kind that embraced the famous saying falsely attributed to Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” While he embraces no particular ideology, partisan advocacy, or party affiliation, he has made a career as an attorney defending unpopular positions. That is, he is not afraid to swim against the tide.

He has been more than an annoyance to the government and powerful interests in the US, exposing the vast spying apparatus of the US security services, supporting whistleblowers, and pressing charges of hypocrisy against “liberal” pundits. Ironically, his call for fairness and consistency in journalistic practices has been met by hostility, even threats from many self-proclaimed liberals.

In more favorable times, Greenwald’s liberal idealism would be met with applause and support by his cohorts. His high school civics-like acclaim for freedom of the press, the right to free speech, and journalistic independence and fairness would earn him a warm embrace from one and all.

But these are not favorable times. The collapse of confidence in US institutions has produced a tidal wave of cynicism. The ascendency of opportunistic politicians, the ever-expanding influence of cash, and the consequent, persistent rightward drift of the political center has fostered dissatisfaction, bitterness, and anger.

The bankruptcy of the two-party system has further coarsened the political landscape, forcing choices between party hacks, corporate toadies and celebrity vulgarians. Thus, the debate over substance remains in a narrow range, while the hyperactive, sensationalist media inject rumor, hearsay, special pleading, conspiracy, and treachery into an already overheated electoral discourse.

Greenwald places his naive, but idealistic values of objective, independent, fair-minded journalism into this nasty cauldron of blind partisanship and hypocrisy.

So it comes as no surprise that his principles became entangled in this electoral season of back stabbing, baseless charge and hysterical countercharge, personal abuse, and fabulism.

Recent accounts-- notably first aired by the right-wing New York Post-- maintain that Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic candidate Joe Biden, was deeply involved in influence-peddling. The Post bases these allegations on e-mails from computers claimed to be left behind by Biden the younger. Claims that Hunter Biden traded on his dad’s position for personal gain and influence are not new. However, this revelation goes a step further, supposedly linking Hunter Biden’s corruption to his father.

Greenwald did not simply defend this story, though he went to some lengths poking holes in the weak defenses offered to the charges of corruption lodged against the Bidens. Instead, as he has done in the past, he scalded the media outlets that refused to cover this story-- investigate it, corroborate it, or disprove it. He charged self-censorship in support of Biden’s candidacy.

But the media outlet that he co-founded, The Intercept, refused to run Greenwald’s article about journalistic opportunism without editorial changes favorable to the Biden campaign. So, imbued with the spirit of Enlightenment liberalism, he again charged censorship and resigned from The Intercept.

Greenwald’s indignation, while admirable in many respects, betrays a substantial measure of credulity. One would think that his encounters with liberal fecklessness would, by now, temper his own self-righteousness.

Not so admirable has been the response of many of his colleagues, especially those on the “respectable, responsible” left.

Instead of rushing to his side in defense of free speech, freedom of the press, independence, etc., much of the soft-left-- those tied to the Democratic Party as the sole agent for change-- vociferously attacked Greenwald.

A new “antifascist” alliance, determined to defeat the bloviating, narcissistic creature birthed by the estrangement of the two parties from the people, has united everyone from the Bush-era torturers and war mongers, through the NSA spymasters, to the RussiaGaters and China-baiters. They, too, have aligned behind Biden at all costs, including at the expense of journalistic ethics and the truth.

Writers like Alan Macleod and Matt Taibbi have documented the shameful response of Greenwald’s former associates and allies.

As with Snowden, Assange, Manning, and other brave souls elevating truth above expediency, Greenwald risks official ostracization. But more tragically, the media warriors who brandish the Bill of Rights at every opportunity fail, again and again, to rise to its defense. They talk the game of fundamental human rights, but when their interests get in the way, they balk at their supposed universal application. That’s a nice way of saying that they are hypocrites.

If the right to a free press, the right to free speech is to mean anything, it must apply even when its content is controversial, even unpopular. That’s what “universal rights” mean. Without universality, “rights” are reduced to privileges, to be exercised when permitted. But the corporate monopoly of the press and other media have made the modern journalist a courtier for wealth and power. They remain silent when the many brave outliers like Phil Donohue, the Dixie Chicks, Seymour Hersh, or now Glenn Greenwald, are muzzled.


Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

Journalists or Courtesans?

If there is an honest, unfettered, or unsullied investigative reporter or commentator working for the major—even minor—US commercial press, would he or she please stand up?

This past several weeks have demonstrated that the so-called “free press” may well be free of overt US government dictate, but it nevertheless hues faithfully to the US government line on foreign policy matters. The words that flow from the official US spokespersons are dutifully recorded and slavishly reported as news copy by every domestic reporter or pundit holding a press badge and assigned to cover a branch of government.

Consider the outrageous rebuff of Seymour Hersh who has won well over a dozen of the most prestigious US journalism awards, including the Pulitzer and five Polk prizes. Responsible for the My Lai and Abu Ghraib atrocity revelations, Hersh has been effectively blacklisted from publishing in the US since 2013. His accounts of the Syrian war and the US assassination of Osama bin Laden were published overseas in the London Review of Books, since his former primary publisher, The New Yorker, and other US outlets refused to accept them. Amazingly, no groups of journalists, journalist organizations, or “freedom of the press” advocates have risen in protest against this muzzling of one of their most esteemed colleagues. Collective letters protesting alleged media repression in socialist countries or countries critical of US policy appear regularly in the New York Review of Books and as paid ads in the New York Times; yet these same indignant journalists, pundits, and academics have remained overwhelmingly silent when it comes to Seymour Hersh.

Even more outrageous is the lack of any serious effort by the mainstream press to confirm or refute Hersh’s claims. His counter narrative to the Obama Administration’s well publicized and embarrassingly self-serving account of bin Laden’s death would be easily assessed by following the threads developed by Hersh. Instead, the press interviewed a handful of government officials and camp followers and left the official story intact.

Even more egregious, some independent investigations of Hersh’s Sarin-gas claims have surfaced that suggest strongly that he might be right in laying the gassing of civilians at the doorstep of US allies in the anti-Assad crusade. Both a UN agency and a Turkish legislative body have challenged the sensational claims of alleged Syrian government barbarity that prop the US argument for regime change. However, no major US media outlet has actively acknowledged this challenge—a shameful affront to journalistic integrity.

The Blair/Ghadaffi Phone Transcripts

A few weeks ago, Tony Blair, former UK Prime Minister, released transcripts of two phone conversations that he had with Muammar Ghadaffi on February 25, 2011. Despite their significant bearing on the early moments of the Libyan rising that led to Ghadaffi’s assassination and overthrow, US media barons and their sycophant employees chose to trivialize the importance of the calls.

Ten days after the date that the West marks as the major start of the Libyan uprising, Tony Blair placed an anxious call to the Libyan leader, self-admittedly at the behest of the Obama administration and the NATO allies. It is just as clear, with hostilities at an early stage, that Blair is threatening Ghadaffi on behalf of his sponsors. He begins innocuously enough, decrying violence and calling for a peaceful outcome. He then adds that Ghadaffi must “engage with the international community, including American and European…” Why that engagement is essential is not clear. But it soon becomes so…

Five hours later, Blair is back on the phone with a message from his masters: “…if you have a safe place to go you should go there because this will not end peacefully and there has to be a process of change, that process of change can be managed and we have to find a way of managing it.” He goes on: “the violence needs to stop and a new constitution needs to take shape… I repeat the statement people have said to me, if there is a way that he can leave he should do so now. I think this can happen peacefully but he has to act now and signal that he wants this to happen.” [my italics]

Blair could not be clearer. He is demanding that the leader of a sovereign country step aside and allow the US and European powers unilaterally and without the consent of the people of Libya to determine the future of Libya. Moreover, Blair clearly backs the demand with the threat of violence—“…this will not end peacefully.” Sane people would count this as tantamount to a coup.

For his part, Ghadaffi asks Blair to come and see the situation himself. He denies that the situation is either dire or unstable. But he does affirm strongly that his opposition is Al Qaeda—that is, extreme fundamentalists. He asks Blair if he supports them: “…are you supporting terrorism?” Exasperated with the threat, Ghaddafi concludes: “…we have no problem, just leave us alone. If you are really serious and you are looking for the truth, get on a plane and come see us.”

Of course Blair and those pulling his strings were not “looking for the truth’ anymore than the Western media are seriously looking for the truth.

Less than three weeks later, the UN declared the infamous “no fly zone” that allowed NATO forces to launch an air war against Ghadaffi’s forces. US and NATO planes, along with covert fighters from the Gulf States, crippled loyalist forces and violently turned the war against Ghadaffi just as Blair said they would.

And today, Libya is a broken, ungovernable state, a haven for jihadists, just as Ghadaffi said would happen.

A pity the courtesans of the US media show no interest in “looking for the truth.”

Adrift in the Persian Gulf

Two shallow draft riverine craft operated by the US military were boarded and held by Iranian security forces near Farsi Island the day of President Obama’s state of the union address and days before a radical shift in US-Iranian relations.

Any reasonably alert reader of US news accounts of this encounter would be curious about nearly every detail and subsequent explanation offered. The fact that two specialized military craft favored by US special operations and used extensively for command, control and reconnaissance, were boarded in Iranian territorial waters near Iran’s largest naval base might cause some wonder.

The fact that the riverine craft are designed to operate in shallow river or coastal waters, but found their way over two hundred miles from the Saudi shore and in the middle of the Persian Gulf surely warrants some further wonder.

The military’s first explanations of these bizarre circumstances blamed engine failure and drift for the embarrassing presence of two boats and ten US personnel in unauthorized waters.

Of course, it’s hard to imagine that both boats suffered engine failure at the same moment and no relief was mobilized to render assistance. Before anyone asked embarrassing questions (not that the lapdog press would), Defense Secretary Ash Carter offered another tale: navigational failure caused the boats to go off course (way off course!).

But should anyone press this explanation (no one did), they might notice that the boats are equipped with sophisticated navigation, radar, and communication systems; and the likelihood that both of the boats would make the same error, go undetected, and proceed radically off course is about the same as a commercial air craft leaving New York’s LaGuardia airport and heading east rather than west.

So the military (CENTCOM) returned to a version of the first account, stating emphatically that mechanical failure of one boat’s diesel engine caused the two to stop for repairs while travelling from Kuwait to Bahrain. Of course that leaves the question of why the shallow draft boats needed to be hundreds of miles from the Saudi coast in the middle of the Persian Gulf, far away from the most direct and appropriate route to their destination.

But the bumbling explanations caused no consternation among the willfully gullible capitalist press. Instead, they reported earnestly the xenophobic ranting of election-season politicians about imaginary offense to US virtue.

Apart from Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept, no significant media figure cast a doubt on the Pentagon’s ever changing fairy tale, another demonstration of the utter spinelessness of the US media.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com