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Showing Original Post only (View all)Here are some lies you can tell about Glenn Greenwald. [View all]
This comes from SuperBowlXX at DailyKos and covers six frequently told lies. Make sure you ignore Greenwald's responses or it might interfere with your ability to righteously propagate the lie of your choice.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/30/1182442/-Glenn-Greenwald-Responds-to-Widespread-Lies-About-Him-on-Cato-Iraq-War-and-more#
From a Post by SuperBowlXX:
Wed Jan 30, 2013 at 09:12 AM PST.
Glenn Greenwald Responds to Widespread Lies About Him (on Cato, Iraq War, and more)
If you're a regular reader of Glenn Greenwald's like I am, you may have occasionally come across some rather vicious lies about his character - that he's a right-wing libertarian and that he supported the Iraq War, among others. I don't know where these claims originated, but I've read plenty of blog posts and comments propagating them during the past few years - both on Daily Kos and elsewhere - and I had hoped for a long time that he would write a comprehensive post debunking them.
On Saturday, Glenn responded to each of these lies and others. You may have missed it since he didn't post it in his regular Guardian column, so I obtained his written permission to reprint his response here in its entirety. It's a bit lengthy, and while I think it is more valuable to discuss the actual issues about which Glenn writes on a daily basis (civil liberties, war, government secrecy, the surveillance state, the state of journalism and the mainstream media) rather than attacks on his personal character, I still believe it's well worth reading why particular claims circulated about him are false. I've added a couple of thoughts of my own at the end of the diary.
by Glenn Greenwald
January 26, 2013
Anyone who develops any sort of platform in US political debates becomes a target of hostility and attack. That's just the nature of politics everywhere. Those attacks often are advanced with falsehoods, fabrications and lies about the person. In general, the point of these falsehoods is to attack and discredit the messenger in lieu of engaging the substance of the critiques.
There are a series of common lies frequently told about me which I'm addressing here. During the Bush years, when I was criticizing George Bush and the GOP in my daily writing and books, there was a set of lies about me personally that came from the hardest-core Bush followers that I finally addressed. The new set comes largely from the hardest-core Obama followers.
I've ignored these for awhile, mostly because they have never appeared in any consequential venue, but rather are circulated only by anonymous commenters or obscure, hackish blogs. That is still the case, but they've become sufficiently circulated that it's now worthwhile to address and debunk them. Anyone wishing to do so can judge the facts for themselves. The following lies are addressed here:
1. I work/worked for the Cato Institute
2. I'm a right-wing libertarian
3. I supported the Iraq War and/or George Bush
4. I moved to Brazil to protest US laws on gay marriage
5. Because I live in Brazil, I have no "skin in the game" for US politics
6. I was sanctioned or otherwise punished for ethical violations in my law practice
______
I work/worked for the Cato Institute
I am not now, nor have I ever been, employed by the Cato Institute. Nor have I ever been affiliated with the Cato Institute in any way. The McCarthyite tone of the denials is appropriate given the McCarthyite nature of the lie.
In seven-plus years of political writing, I have written a grand total of twice for Cato: the first was a 2009 report on the success of drug decriminalization in Portugal, and the second was a 2010 online debate in which I argued against former Bush officials about the evils of the surveillance state.
I not only disclosed those writings but wrote about them and featured them multiple times on my blog as it happened: see here and here as but two examples. In 2008, I spoke at a Cato event on the radicalism and destructiveness of Bush/Cheney executive power theories.That's the grand total of all the work I ever did for or with Cato in my life. The fees for those two papers and that one speech were my standard writing and speaking fees. Those payments are a miniscule, microscopic fraction of my writing and speaking income over the last 7 years. I have done no paying work of any kind with them since that online surveillance debate in 2010 (I spoke three times at Cato for free: once to debate the theme of my 2007 book on the failure of the Bush administration, and twice when I presented my paper advocating drug decriminalization).
I have done far more work for, and received far greater payments from, the ACLU, with which I consulted for two years (see here). I spoke at the Socialism Conference twice - once in 2011 and once in 2012 - and will almost certainly do so again in 2013. I'll speak or write basically anywhere where I can have my ideas heard without any constraints. Moreover, I'll work with almost anyone - the ACLU, Cato or anyone else - to end the evils of the Drug War and the Surveillance State. And I'll criticize anyone I think merits it, as I did quite harshly with the Koch Brothers in 2011: here.
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