Glenn Greenwald: How the US Government Strikes Fear in Its Own Citizens and People Around the World

[marmar]

AlterNet / By Glenn Greenwald

Glenn Greenwald: How the US Government Strikes Fear in Its Own Citizens and People Around the World
In a recent speech, Glenn Greenwald discussed how the government and media treatment of WikiLeaks reveals a total lack of respect for the law and government transparency.

March 21, 2011 |


(Editor's note: The following is a transcript of a speech that Constitutional lawyer and Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald delivered for the Lannan Foundation on March 8. The speech was transcribed by the blog Contumacious.)

I've been speaking more at events like this and at various college campuses and the like over the last year. And one of the things that typically happens before the event, is that there's a lot of time and mental energy spent on figuring out what the topic of the speech is going to be, and what the title is going to be. The speaker and the sponsors of the event go back and forth over what will be an interesting topic, what's timely, what will be interesting to people. And then the title gets worked on and changed and edited. I have several speeches planned over the course of the next month, and there are all different topics and titles that were all worked out as part of this arduous process. What I found is that, as much time and energy that's spent on that process, it actually ends up being completely irrelevant, because I find that no matter what the topic is, I keep speaking about the same set of issues, no matter what the title is.

The reason why that happens is not because I have some monomaniacal obsession with a handful of issues I can't pull myself away from no matter what the topic is. That may be true, but that's not actually the reason. The reason is because political controversies and political issues never take place in isolation. They're always part of some broader framework, that drives political outcomes, and that determines how political power is exercised. And so it doesn't really matter which specific topic, or which specific controversy of the day you want to discuss, the reality is, you can't really meaningfully discuss any of them without examining all the forces that shape political culture, and that shape how political outcomes are determined. So, in order to talk about any issue, you end up speaking about these same, broad themes, that are shaping, and I think plaguing, the political discourse in the United States.

This is something that I first realized when I started writing about politics in late 2005. One of the very first topics on which I focused was the scandal about the Bush administration eavesdropping on American citizens without the warrants required by law. This was first exposed by the NYT in December of 2005, so it happened around six weeks after I began writing about politics. I had this very naïve idea that this was going to be very straightforward and simple political controversy. The reason I thought that in my naiveté, was because what the Bush administration got caught doing is as clear as could possibly be a felony under American law. You can actually look at the criminal law that existed since 1978, when FISA was enacted. It says that doing exactly what the Bush administration got caught doing, is a felony in the U.S., just like robbing a bank, or extortion or murder, and that it's punishable by a prison term of five years or a $10,000 fine for each offense. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/rights/150330/glenn_greenwald%3A_how_the_us_government_strikes_fear_in_its_own_citizens_and_people_around_the_world/

[Vinnie From Indy]

1. K&R

Greenwald is one of America's best journalists.

Cheers!

[Luminous Animal]

2. That was an excellent speech.

[Mnemosyne]

3. Thank you, marmar. K&R n/t

[pmorlan1]

4. K & R

Thanks for posting.

[bhikkhu]

5. Well worth reading

I find it difficult to resolve my own issues with the Obama presidency, chiefly because of this. There is maybe 70% of his actions and policy which seems brilliant, and which I can only support and hope for the best results; and then there's the wikileaks persecution, the protection of torturers, State dept malfeasance, and so on...