Orlando: Islam

'The instant exploitation of this attack is part of a more general trend of exploiting liberal social issues to glorify agendas of militarism, tribal conflicts, and aggressive foreign policies. Decorate the GCHQ headquarters or the Tel Aviv city hall with the LGBT’s rainbow flag colors and suddenly mass surveillance and decades-long military occupation seems pretty and liberal. Choose militaristic U.S. Presidents who represent social milestones of race and gender and suddenly their militarism seems to liberals to be more tolerable and even inspiring. Pretend that the war on Afghanistan is about feminism, and aggression toward Iran is about protecting LGBTs, and watch liberals melt with appreciation. Disguise anti-Muslim animus as pro-LGBT activism and one can quickly expand support for a neocon mentality and agenda into large sectors of western liberalism.

'Depicting anti-LGBT hatred as the exclusive (or even predominant) province of Islam is not only defamatory toward Muslims but does a massive disservice to the millions of LGBTs who have been — and continue to be — seriously oppressed, targeted, and attacked by people have nothing to do with Islam. The struggle of LGBTs around the world is difficult enough without having them cynically used as some sort of prop to bash a group that itself is already being bashed from multiple directions.'

Stop Exploiting LGBT Issues to Demonize Islam and Justify Anti-Muslim Policies, Glenn Greenwald.

Hope Peter Tatchell reads this - then maybe he'll see why so many gay men on the left think he's a right wing imperialist stooge.

Here he is being not racist or Islamophobic earlier.

Orlando: Leave

And to think some say the debate about the EU referendum has become so debased it's been reduced to hysterical apocalyptic doom-mongering.

An Israeli group is trying to blame it on the Palestinians!

Chomsky, Greenwald & Snowden: On Privacy

The balance between national security and government intrusion on the rights of private citizens was the topic of a panel discussion featuring renowned linguist and MIT professor Noam Chomsky, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, and Intercept co-founding editor Glenn Greenwald. Nuala O’Connor, president and CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology, acted as moderator.

Hillary Clinton: Always There

February 2013, her second Advocate cover.

'Gay rights are human rights.' *

This simple statement is the principle underlying Hillary Clinton’s actions on behalf of the LGBT community — past, present, and future. It was the impetus behind another powerful action, announcing her full support for gay marriage, using more of her powerful words:

“LGBT Americans are our colleagues, our teachers, our soldiers, our friends, our loved ones…And they are full and equal citizens and deserve the rights of citizenship. That includes marriage.” **

Twenty years after Hillary welcomed us as a couple into the White House, Judy and I got married just a few minutes away at the National Mall. When we got home from our reception, we had a letter from Hillary congratulating us on our marriage. I’ll never forget the first few words written on her letter: “at long last.”

Hillary has always stood with me, Judy, and the entire LGBT community. And she always will.

The Advocate op-ed August 2014.

Just one example of their endless fawning coverage of this evil woman GAY ICON!

* How Fagburn recalled her 'landmark' speech to the UN.

** She was a vocal opponent of equal marriage until March 2013.

[Bill] Clinton's longtime friend Taylor Branch interviewed the former president several times in the 1990s for an oral history project. One recording in particular, from 1999, is raising eyebrows for its content. Bill Clinton is said to have used offensive phrases such as "the gay agenda," and to have made references to gays "acting out," which when viewed in a contemporary frame could be seen as damaging in terms of LGBT support...

According to Branch, as Hillary Clinton prepared to enter the New York U.S. Senate race, President Clinton worried that her positions on gay rights would hurt the campaign. After stopping the interview to take a call from his wife, the President returned with a candid assessment of how the issue could affect her campaign. Branch says in his recording:

“[Bill] came in and he said, ‘You know I’ve had much more contact in my life with gay people than Hillary has. He said, ‘I think she’s really a little put off by some of this stuff.’ [Bill] said, ‘Generally I support the gay agenda right down the line. He said [signing Don't Ask Don't Tell] was hard for me, and I’m sure there are still a few things that are hard for me to swallow.'"

Branch recounts President Clinton's worries about the upcoming New York Senate race and claims the president told him, "Hillary, emotionally speaking, still finds the issue harder to swallow than I do. And that it could be difficult for her in New York politics, how far she’ll be asked to go.” ...

The Advocate, September 2015.

LOL!

PS As Glenn Greenwald has written Hillary is also adored by Wall Street, the Israel lobby, imperial war zealots and old school Neo-Cons.

Deleted Tweet Of The Week: Chelsea Manning

.@ggreenwald He's fast. But here's the screenshot. pic.twitter.com/ZHLf7e6zRM

— Billmon (@billmon1) August 13, 2015

Coz Chelsea Manning being threatened with being thrown in solitary confinement on ludicrous charges iz well LOL!!!

Hillary Clinton: Vote For Me! Vote Barf!

Who's excited about Hillary's candidacy? The Israel lobby, Wall Street, Warmongers and Neo-Cons - Glenn Greenwald.

But never mind that, she sure loves them (middle class and married) gays!

The gay media's blinkered adoration of this woman is pathetic.

PS Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders however is not a complete corporate stooge.

Venezuela: Take That!

The White House on Monday announced the imposition of new sanctions on various Venezuelan officials, pronouncing itself “deeply concerned by the Venezuelan government’s efforts to escalate intimidation of its political opponents”: deeply concerned. President Obama also, reportedly with a straight face, officially declared that Venezuela poses “an extraordinary threat to the national security” of the U.S. — a declaration necessary to legally justify the sanctions...

That nothing is more insincere than purported U.S. concerns over political repression is too self-evident to debate. Supporting the most repressive regimes on the planet in order to suppress and control their populations is and long has been a staple of U.S. (and British) foreign policy. “Human rights” is the weapon invoked by the U.S. Government and its loyal media to cynically demonize regimes that refuse to follow U.S. dictates, while far worse tyranny is steadfastly overlooked, or expressly cheered, when undertaken by compliant regimes, such as those in Riyadh and Cairo (seethis USA Today article, one of many, recently hailing the Saudis as one of the “moderate” countries in the region). 

This is exactly the tactic that leads neocons to feign concern for Afghan women or the plight of Iranian gays when doing so helps to gin up war-rage against those regimes, while they snuggle up to far worse but far more compliant regimes...

If Obama and supporters want the government of Venezuela to be punished and/or toppled because they refuse to comply with U.S. dictates, they should at least be honest about their beliefs so that their true character can be seen. Pretending that any of this has to do with the U.S. Government’s anger over suppression of political opponents — when their closest allies are the world champions at that — should be too insulting of everyone’s intelligence to even be an option.

Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept.

PS Foreign secretary Philip Hammond has warned that Russia "has the potential to pose the single greatest threat" to UK security. BBC News. Don't laugh.

CIA: Torture

Says something that even the Mail's appalled.

Anal rape? Yes please!

From the newly declassified document via Wikileaks.

Now, if only there was some plucky young whistle-blower who could have leaked this earlier, so AmeriKKKa could put her in jail...

One of the worst myths official Washington and its establishment media have told itself about the torture debate is that the controversy is limited to three cases of waterboarding at Guantánamo and a handful of bad Republican actors. In fact, a wide array of torture techniques were approved at the highest levels of the U.S. Government and then systematically employed in lawless US prisons around the world – at Bagram (including during the Obama presidency), CIA black sites, even to US citizens on US soil. So systematic was the torture regime that a 2008 Senate report concluded that the criminal abuses at Abu Ghraib were the direct result of the torture mentality imposed by official Washington.

American torture was not confined to a handful of aberrational cases or techniques, nor was it the work of rogue CIA agents. It was an officially sanctioned, worldwide regime of torture that had the acquiescence, if not explicit approval, of the top members of both political parties in Congress. It was motivated by far more than interrogation. The evidence for all of this is conclusive and overwhelming. And the American media bears much of the blame, as they refused for years even to use the word “torture” to describe any of this (even as theycalled these same techniques “torture” when used by American adversaries), a shameful and cowardly abdication that continues literally to this day in many of the most influential outlets.

Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept.

Peter Brookes for The Times.

Chelsea Manning Watch: Poisoned

Chelsea Manning, the US army soldier who released hundreds of thousands of secret documents to WikiLeaks, has filed a lawsuit in a federal court that charges her military jailers with violating her constitutional rights by denying medical treatment for gender dysphoria.

The legal complaint, lodged with a US district court in Washington DC, accuses the army of repeatedly ignoring her pleas for appropriate treatment for her condition. It names as defendants: the secretary of defence Chuck Hagel, major general David Quantock of the army corrections command, and colonel Erica Nelson who commands the disciplinary barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where Manning is held.

“Every day that goes by without appropriate treatment, [Manning] experiences escalating anxiety, distress and depression. She feels as though her body is being poisoned by testosterone,” the suit says....

The Guardian.

Last week Chelsea wrote a comment piece for The Guardian, How To Make Isis Fall On Its Own Sword. See also Glenn Greenwald, Bombing Syria.

Chomsky: Greenwald

'
'If you're somebody who enjoys bashing the American media - and I am somebody who enjoys that immensely - it comes as no surprise that in the abstract you recognise that the American media all the time disseminates wildly false claims... But when you're actually at the centre of one the stories and you know first-hand what actually happened your appreciation for their eagerness and capacity to deceive substantially increases.' Glenn Greenwald.

Update: A glowing review of Greenwald's new book, No Place To Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the surveillance state, by his evil pinko paymasters at The Guardian.

Also published Monday, Beyond: Edward Snowden the comic book.

David Miranda: In The Interests Of National Security

The nine-hour detention at Heathrow Airport of an ex-Guardian journalist's partner has been ruled lawful.

David Miranda lives with reporter Glenn Greenwald who has written articles about state surveillance based on leaked documents.

At the High Court, Mr Miranda claimed his detention under anti-terrorism laws was unlawful and breached human rights.

But judges said it was a "proportionate measure in the circumstances" and in the interests of national security.

In his judgement, Lord Justice Laws, sitting with Mr Justice Ouseley and Mr Justice Openshaw, said: "Its objective was not only legitimate, but very pressing."

BBC News.

The truth won't set you free, it'll get you detained.

• Glenn Greenwald and Michael Albert discuss the difficulties of doing good journalism within the confines of mainstream media, secrecy and corporations and Greenwald’s new media project, The Intercept.

The Intercept: Going Live

The Intercept - Glenn Greenwald's new online "fearless, independent journalism" thing - is now live!

David Miranda: Nobody's Errand Boy

BuzzFeed profile David Miranda, Glenn Greenwald's boyfriend.

David Miranda: Goliath Strikes Back

The detention of the partner of a former Guardian journalist has triggered fresh concerns after it emerged that a key reason cited by police for holding him under terrorism powers was the belief that he was promoting a "political or ideological cause".

The revelation has alarmed leading human rights groups and a Tory MP, who said the justification appeared to be without foundation and threatened to have damaging consequences for investigative journalism.

David Miranda is the partner of Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who – often in collaboration with the Guardian – has broken many stories about the extent and scope of spying by the US National Security Agency. Miranda was stopped at Heathrow airport in August and held by the Metropolitan police for nine hours while on his way home to Brazil.

Miranda, it has been claimed, was carrying some 58,000 encrypted UK intelligence documents. He had spent a week in Berlin visiting a journalist, Laura Poitras, who has worked with Greenwald on many of his stories, which have been based on information leaked by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Now documents referred to in court last week before a judicial review of Miranda's detention shine new light on the Metropolitan police's explanation for invoking terrorism powers – a decision critics have called draconian...

The draft that was finally used states: "Intelligence indicates that Miranda is likely to be involved in espionage activity which has the potential to act against the interests of UK national security. We therefore wish to establish the nature of Miranda's activity, assess the risk that Miranda poses to national security and mitigate as appropriate."

The Observer.

And finally... Glenn Greenwald signs off from the Guardian.  

Glenn Greenwald: Enemy Of The State

“I came of age in the late ’70s, early ’80s, when things were way worse than they are now. And, you know, you get this strong sense that somehow the prevailing order is antithetical to who you are—it rejects you, is hostile to you, it teaches you that you’re bad and wrong and dirty. You feel like you can’t reason or deal with it. You just feel it and its powerful force. So there’s a lot of different ways to cope and deal with that.”

“One way is people internalize those judgments. Like, ‘I’m horrible, I’m filthy, I’m broken, I’m wrong, I’m defective, I’m going to go destroy myself’ — which is why gay teens end up killing themselves, right? I just decided to turn the aggression on the people I felt were attacking me. I was like, ‘You’re not going to tell me that I’m wrong, I’m going to show you that your actions are wrong.’ So that was the approach I took toward authority. This very hostile, aggressive way of being that required me to analyze all figures of power and that eventually became waging war on prevailing orthodoxies. And when you do that, it’s an intellectually lonely exercise, but you become much stronger.”

The Advocate run a lengthy, very interesting profile of Glenn Greenwald.

And just to lighten the mood here they give you ten Hello! style fun facts about Glenn and his hot Brazilian boyf David Miranda.

Glenn Greenwald: Quo Vadis?

Glenn Greenwald, the lawyer and blogger who brought The Guardian the biggest scoop of the decade, is departing the London-based news organization, for a brand-new, large-scale, broadly focused media outlet, he told BuzzFeed Tuesday.

Greenwald, 46, published revelations from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden about the extent of American and British domestic spying and about officials’ deception about its scope. He said he is departing for a new, “once-in-a-career dream journalistic opportunity” with major financial backing, the details of which will be public soon.

“My partnership with The Guardian has been extremely fruitful and fulfilling: I have high regard for the editors and journalists with whom I worked and am incredibly proud of what we achieved,” Greenwald said in an emailed statement. “The decision to leave was not an easy one, but I was presented with a once-in-a-career dream journalistic opportunity that no journalist could possibly decline.”

Greenwald said that because the news had leaked “before we were prepared to announce it, I’m not yet able to provide any details of this momentous new venture.” It will, he said, “be unveiled very shortly."

...Greenwald declined to comment on the precise scale of the new venture or on its budget, but he said it would be “a very well-funded … very substantial new media outlet.” He said the source of funding will be public when the venture is officially announced...

“My role, aside from reporting and writing for it, is to create the entire journalism unit from the ground up by recruiting the journalists and editors who share the same journalistic ethos and shaping the whole thing — but especially the political journalism part — in the image of the journalism I respect most,” he said.

Greenwald will continue to live in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, he said, and would bring some staff to Rio, but the new organization’s main hubs will be New York City; Washington, D.C.; and San Francisco, he said.

The venture, which he said had “hired a fair number of people already,” will be “a general media outlet and news site — it’s going to have sports and entertainment and features. I’m working on the whole thing but the political journalism unit is my focus.”

Greenwald said he looked forward to creating a new organization with “no preexisting institutional strictures on what you can do.”

And he said his move is driven solely by the opportunity presented.

“When people hear what it is, there is almost no journalist who would say no to it,” he said.

BuzzFeed.

How amusing that this news was leaked.

Fagburn can exclusively reveal that he doesn't know what this is all about, yet.

PS There's a rumour his wealthy benefactor is the billionaire eBay founder, Pierre Omidyar. [No idea if this other story is reliable].

The Holy State: Heroes & Villains

The Independent On Sunday.

Heroes And Villains: Whistleblowers are vilified or intimidated while the wrongs and the wrongdoers that they expose go uninvestigated - Paul Valley.

Rot in jail you traitor - the Daily Star's thoughtful and balanced piece on Chelsea Manning.

Back later...

Notes on language: Interesting that most media call David Glenn's "partner". Though the hilarously stupid Gay Star News called David his "gay partner". Just in case you didn't know these two men who are partners are gay...

PS Slow news day? Let's just say Cheryl Cole getting her bum tattooed is The Sun's front page story...

David Miranda: Can't Happen Here!

At 6:30 am this morning my time - 5:30 am on the East Coast of the US - I received a telephone call from someone who identified himself as a "security official at Heathrow airport." He told me that my partner, David Miranda, had been "detained" at the London airport "under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act of 2000."

David had spent the last week in Berlin, where he stayed with Laura Poitras, the US filmmaker who has worked with me extensively on the NSA stories. A Brazilian citizen, he was returning to our home in Rio de Janeiro this morning on British Airways, flying first to London and then on to Rio. When he arrived in London this morning, he was detained.

At the time the "security official" called me, David had been detained for 3 hours. The security official told me that they had the right to detain him for up to 9 hours in order to question him, at which point they could either arrest and charge him or ask a court to extend the question time. The official - who refused to give his name but would only identify himself by his number: 203654 - said David was not allowed to have a lawyer present, nor would they allow me to talk to him.

I immediately contacted the Guardian, which sent lawyers to the airport, as well various Brazilian officials I know. Within the hour, several senior Brazilian officials were engaged and expressing indignation over what was being done. The Guardian has the full story here.

Glenn Greenwald writing in Monday's Guardian.

Yesterday's Guardian ran an interview with David.
The Guardian's slightly gone to town on this - the talented Mr GG is one of their own, of course - but it's been the biggest news story of the week so far.
Chilling stuff - and a story involving a clear breach of the human rights of a gay man, whose only "crime" is being the boyfriend of an investigative journalist; Amnesty are on to it.

One wonders if the gay media's coverage would have been different if David Miranda had been detained illegally by the Russian authorities?

Pink News haven't covered it at all, for shame.

Anyway, I've organised a protest outside the British Embassy in Moscow for this Saturday - please join me.

 

Update: Textbook stuff from Richard Littlejohn in Friday's Daily Mail:

 

One might have hoped that the Guardian would extend the same support to Jim Davidson as they have to their own man.
But while Miranda has the right credentials — gay, fashionably Brazilian, Left-wing, anti-American, anti-British — Jimbo [Jim Davidson] ticks all the wrong boxes.
He’s a serial heterosexual, fiercely patriotric, works tirelessly for military charities, tells the ‘wrong’ kind of jokes and, horror or horrors, was a cheerleader for Mrs Thatcher and the Tories.
So, even if he isn’t guilty, as far as the Guardian is concerned it serves him right. His kind aren’t entitled to ‘human rights’.
Meanwhile, Jimmy Savile remains dead.

 

If anyone has the faintest idea what that last line means, can they please get in touch?

Glenn Greenwald: Political Exile

Blogger and columnist Glenn Greenwald may have broken the biggest American story of the year, but the American can’t even live in America.
Greenwald, a gay man, moved to Brazil so he could be with his spouse since the U.S. government does not recognize same-sex couples when applying for residency visas. Greenwald said that this experience has allowed him to cast a critical eye on the subjects he reports on.
“When you grow up with any kind of real challenge that forces you to evaluate your relationship to these conventions and the things that you’re taught…you start to question what that system is.” Greenwald said. “Is it really valid in the way that it’s rejecting me or is it the system itself that is corrupted? I think that lends itself to a much more critical eye that you end up casting upon things that you’re taught are indisputably true.”

CNN - you can watch the interview excerpt here.
Glenn Greenwald hates it when someone's biographical details are prioritised over what they think and say, so maybe you could read his blog on Guardian Online.

Update: On Friday 14th The Guardian started this stunningly misguided open thread, Glenn Greenwald: In his readers' words.
Please don't try and turn serious journalists into minor celebrities.

Bradley Manning: On Pride And Power

If a person's actions threaten power factions or are deemed prohibited by them, then Good Authoritarians will reflexively view the person as evil and will be eager to publicly disassociate themselves from such individuals. Or, as Williams put it, "even the hint of support" for Manning "will not be tolerated", and those who deviate from this decree will be "disciplined". 

Even the SF Gay Pride Parade is now owned by and beholden to the nation's largest corporations, subject to their dictates. Those who run the event are functionaries of, loyalists to, the nation's most powerful political officials. That's how this parade was so seamlessly transformed from orthodoxy-challenging, individualistic and creative cultural icon into yet another pile of obedient apparatchiks that spout banal slogans doled out by the state while viciously scorning those who challenge them. Yes, there will undoubtedly still be exotically-dressed drag queens, lesbian motorcycle clubs, and groups proudly defined by their unusual sexual proclivities participating in the parade, but they'll be marching under a Bank of America banner and behind flag-waving fans of the National Security State, the US President, and the political party that dominates American politics and its political and military institutions. Yet another edgy, interesting, creative, independent event has been degraded and neutered into a meek and subservient ritual that must pay homage to the nation's most powerful entities and at all costs avoid offending them in any way...

It's hardly surprising that someone who so boldly and courageously opposes the US war machine is demonized and scorned this way. Daniel Ellsberg was subjected to the same attacks before he was transformed many years later into a liberal hero (though Ellsberg had the good fortune to be persecuted by a Republican rather than Democratic President and thus, even back then, had some substantial support; come to think of it, Ellsberg lives in San Francisco: would expressions of support for him be tolerated?). But the fact that such lock-step, heel-clicking, military-mimicking behavior is now coming from the SF Gay Pride Parade of all places is indeed noteworthy: it reflects just how pervasive this authoritarian rot has become.

From a brilliant scorching piece by Glenn Greenwald on the Guardian's Comment Is Free. 

Paraphrasing Greenwald slightly, this incident - SFGate? - may be relatively small in the general scheme of things, but it tells us so much about what's wrong in the world of gay.
It also seems there's some difference between how Manning is seen in the States and the UK.
Though it took some time for the mainstream media to take much notice of his case, he's become quite the liberal cause celebre over here, Guardian readers voted him Person Of The Year 2012.

PS Seems to have become a "thing" to compile pointless Gay Power Lists.
Thank fuck for all those gay people who don't seek or serve power.