Did you know that Greenwald once addressed CAIR, which latter has been accused by the FBI of links to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood?
And did you also know that Greenwald writes, apparently without a trace of irony, about ‘the military coup (sic!) against the democratically elected Egyptian government of the Muslim Brotherhood’ (sic!)?
Presumably, this is not to be confused with the ‘democratically elected’ government of Germany, the National Socialists. Or how about the Ukrainian coup, or dare I say, ‘regime change?’ See this on some apparently unproven allegations that some have made about The Intercept’s billionaire funder Omidyar, and Greenwald’s consummately feeble rationalization, which will be perfectly convincing…
To the kind of person who takes everything they read in the establishment indymedia seriously, and doesn’t know how to read critically and evaluate whatever they find.
I wonder how many readers of The Intercept fall into that category? I mean, it’s not exactly Fox News, right? (Not unlike how CNN or NBC are not exactly Fox News, no doubt).
I mean, hell, it’s not even Infowars or WND! So it must be true, I read it in the Intercept!
No. It’s not convincing to me. What do I mean by that? I mean that Greenwald, as quoted in the article I link to above, doesn’t show any signs of serious concern about the potential moral implications if the allegations in question should prove to be true. And this being so, the question of whether or not the allegations about Omidyar are true or not are perhaps not the most important thing any more! Greenwald’s reaction is what is really interesting…
Greenwald also co-authored a hilariously sinister and disturbingly laugh-out-loud-solemn puff-piece story. In this charming, patronizing, and somewhat infantilizing tale of woe, Greenwald presents Nihad Awad as the beleaguered underdog undergoing intrusive surveillance by the US State, rather than as being a top individual from a certain organization. A certain organization that some (but presumably not Greenwald and quite a few others of various factions and ideological persuasions!) would say has a lot of questions to answer.
Well, maybe Greenwald is right, maybe he isn’t; but one thing’s for sure. Whenever there’s a chance for a pity-party-by-proxy, the establishment indymedia will milk it for all it’s worth in wasted white guy hipster-media net searching tears of thwarted Googlers! There aren’t enough cups in the whole of Berkeley campus to hold the salty torrents gushing from the eyes of the perspicuously devoted catechetes of The Intercept, I am sure…
Or then again, maybe not. I guess they just ain’t no Daily Mail, right?
In fairness, Greenwald himself is rather good at posing questions, truth be told. But he has been known, upon occasion, to leave crucial gaps in his stories. For one thing, he has never given convincing evidence that rather than being an anti-racist magazine, Charlie Hebdo is actually ‘racist.’ Indeed, in Greenwald’s writings, the fabled ‘anti-Muslim’ oh sorry, ‘Islamophobic’ tendencies of Charlie Hebdo tend to be asserted, and not discussed with any rigour or detail.
And just to make sure I am not accused of inconsistency here, I will post some links to a rather contrived and speculative piece by Greenwald on Charlie Hebdo. I will also post to the notorious Financial Times article by Tony Barber. Perhaps if Greenwald ever gets itchy feet, he could work for FT instead?
It’s clear that Greenwald asserts that the cartoons are anti-Muslim, but there’s never any sign, on the whole, of his desire to interpret them in a remotely rigorous manner. It is as though for Greenwald, the meaning of the cartoons are ‘common sense’ and can be understood immediately by some mystical insight; not unlike how Fred Phelps says the Bible ‘proves gay people are sodomites’ because of the undeniable and inspired ‘plain common sense meaning.’ Or indeed, not unlike how the Islamic State promote their Daeshi/political Islamist nonsense about women, Christians, Jews, other Muslims, Yazidis via similar process of ‘closure’ so that the meaning is fixed, and anyone who disagrees with their interpretation is either ‘foolish’ or ‘wicked.’
Surely readers of the Intercept deserve better than staggeringly slipshod artistic interpretation and wildly implausible readings of cartoons?