By Glenn Greenwald

blog

Email exchange with reader over First Look and NSA reporting

Below is an email exchange I had with a reader over questions he asked about our new venture and the reporting we’ve been doing in the NSA story, which I’m publishing with his permission. I’ve edited the exchange for clarity and to address several questions that have been raised by others elsewhere. My reply is first, followed by the email he sent:

________has been created is a non-profit, and I own none of it, and that was the plan from the start. The tech company – created to build privacy technologies and other tools – is for-profit, and I own none of that. The same is true of Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill.

My relationship to First Look is fundamentally unchanged from my relationship to Salon and the Guardian: I will write my blog and news articles which they publish. The only formal difference is that, because it’s a start-up, we’re building the whole thing from the ground up, and part of my work now, and in the future, will go beyond just the journalism I’m personally producing to help shape and construct what the new venture will be. That is a big part of what makes it so exciting for me.

I’ve long been a critic of establishment media outlets and the deficiencies in American journalism. Before ever talking to Pierre Omidyar, we – Laura, Jeremy and I – decided to build our own media outlet so that we were doing more than just critiquing systemic flaws in US journalism. Creating a new venture would allow us instead to rectify, rather than just complain about, those problems by doing the kind of journalism we think is so woefully lacking.

The ability to create a strongly resourced media outlet devoted to that vision of journalism is something the three of us hoped to achieve, and that’s why we’re so excited by the new venture. But none of the three of us, including me, has an ownership stake in the new non-profit media outlet.

(2) My comment about how this is a unique and exciting opportunity wasn’t about ownership, since I have none. It was about the opportunity to help build something new and unique. What attracted me – and Laura, Jeremy, Liliana Segura, Micah Lee, Dan Froomkin and others – was the prospect that this is going to be a unique media outlet: a well-supported and uniquely structured institution that is designed from the start to encourage, support and empower – rather than undermine, dilute and neuter – independent, adversarial journalists. The whole point of how we’re structuring it is to insulate journalists from the pressures – both internal and external – that detract from their independence and ability to do fearless journalism.

I fully understand that people are skeptical: they should be, since we haven’t even started yet. I’d be skeptical, too, and would want to see evidence that it will work this way, which can only come from the journalism we produce. But that doesn’t deter us from being excited about the potential that we think this will fulfill.

One of the major problems I’ve had in publishing these documents is that many large media institutions, even the ones with the best journalistic intentions, have all sorts of constraints – financial, legal, cultural – that produce fear and timidity, and that has sometimes slowed down or diluted our ability to publish the way we wanted to. Why would we not be excited about being able to help build an organization explicitly designed to avoid all of that from the start, and to provide an environment where independent journalists can work free of any of those kind of baseless impediments, while having all the support they want and need to produce rigorous, accurate adversarial journalism?

(3) The centrality of me and the NSA story to this new venture has been wildly overstated. Yes, my joining it is what caused there to be a lot of publicity in the first instance, but that’s only because we were not ready to announce it when it leaked. This is going to be a general-interest media outlet with many dozens of journalists, editors and others with long and established histories of journalism, and obviously extends far beyond my work or the NSA story. Pierre began planning a new media company before he and I ever spoke a word to each other.

We decided to join forces in late September when Jeremy, Laura and I were beginning to create our own new media outlet, and once we spoke, realized how perfectly our efforts meshed with what he was already trying to build. Mine and Laura’s work now obviously focuses on the NSA story, but at some point, that will no longer be true, and the new venture itself will be far, far more diversified from its launch. The very idea that Pierre would stop what he was doing and devote himself to building a new media organization with $250 million in funding – all motivated by one story that has already been reported elsewhere around the world for 7 months and will continue to be reported in all sorts of other media outlets – is simply ridiculous.

(4) The claim that we are “holding back documents” for some nefarious or self-interested purpose is and always has been false. I have discussed many times before – most prominently here – why our agreement with our source, along with related legal issues, prevents any sort of mass release of documents , but I have been working endlessly, as has Laura, to continue to publish stories all around the world, including publishing many stories and documents  after we formed our new venture .

Not only have I published new documents in Norway, Sweden, France, Spain, and Holland after we formed our new venture, but I also published one of the most attention-generating stories yet in the Huffington Post just five weeks ago. Similarly, Laura has published numerous big articles and key NSA documents in both der Spiegel  and the NYT  after we formed our new venture. We’re doing the exact opposite of this accusation: we’re publishing documents and stories aggressively all over the world with other media outlets until our First Look site is ready.

We will continue to publish aggressively with other outlets until we are up and running at First Look. In fact, I am working right now with other news outlets, including in the U.S., on big stories. I’m not “holding back” anything: of all the many entities with thousands of Snowden documents, I have published more NSA documents, in more nations around the world, than anyone. And there are many, many more that will be published in the short-term.

But – and this is critical – in his Washington Post interview with Snowden last month, Bart Gellman noted “Snowden’s insistence, to this reporter and others, that he does not want the documents published in bulk.” From the start, Snowden indeed repeatedly insisted on that.

Anyone who demands that we “release all documents” – or even release large numbers in bulk – is demanding that we violate our agreement with our source, disregard the framework we created when he gave us the documents, jeopardize his interests in multiple ways, and subject him to far greater legal (and other) dangers. I find that demand to be unconscionable, and we will never, ever violate our agreement with him no matter how many people want us to.

That said, we have published an extraordinary number of top secret NSA documents around the world in a short period of time. And our work is very far from done: there are many, many more documents and stories that we will publish.

Toward that end, we have very carefully increased the number of journalists and experts who are working on these documents and who have access to them. We are now working with more experts in cryptography and hacking than ever. One of the most exciting things about our new organization is that we now have the resources to process and report these documents more quickly and efficiently than ever before, consistent with ensuring that we don’t make the kinds of errors that would allow others to attack the reporting.

These documents are complex. Sometimes they take a good deal of reporting to fill in some of the gaps. From the start, people have been eager for us to make serious mistakes so they can exploit them to discredit the reporting, and so we work very hard to make sure that doesn’t happen. That takes time. Convincing media institutions (and their armies of risk-averse lawyers, editors and executives) to publish documents, the aggressive way we think they need to be published, also often takes a lot of time.

When we began our reporting in June by publishing a new story every day, even our allies – people who work on these issues for a living – complained that the releases were coming too fast to process, understand, or keep up with, and argued that each story needs time to be processed and to allow people to react.

In terms of effects, I think it’s hard to argue with the strategy. Even seven months later, the story continues to dominate headlines around the world and to trigger what Chelsea Manning described in her private chat as her goal when whistleblowing: “worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms“. That’s why Edward Snowden made clear to Bart Gellman that he “succeeded beyond plausible ambition.”

For the same reason, I’m proud that we’re trying to amplify the lessons and maximize the impact of these disclosures even more through things like books and films, which can reach and affect audiences that political reporting by itself never can. I’ve been working for many years warning of the dangers of state surveillance and the value of internet freedom and privacy, and am thrilled to now be able to have those messages heard much more loudly and clearly than ever before by using all platforms to communicate them.

In sum, I know that we have been and continue to be extremely faithful and loyal to the agreement we entered into with our source, and are doing our journalism exactly as we assured him he would. As Snowden himself has said, he thinks that, too. That continues to be a critically important metric for me.

(5) Contrary to the false claim repeatedly made, I am not the only person with the documents. From the very beginning, Laura Poitras has had her own separate full set – and still does – that she’s been working with from the start. Even though people weirdly like to pretend that she doesn’t exist in order to falsely claim that I have “exclusive control” over the documents, she’s an actual adult human being who exercises her own independent (and quite willful) autonomy and judgment over what documents will be reported and how. Even if I for some dark and secret reason wanted to hold back documents, I don’t have the power to do so, since Laura has and always has had her own full set with which she’s been working and reporting for many months.

But beyond Laura, there are multiple organizations with tens of thousands of Snowden documents – tens of thousands! That includes the New York Times, the Guardian, ProPublica, and Bart Gellman/The Washington Post. Do these conspiracy theorists believe that Pierre is somehow going to control all of them, too, and prevent them from publishing documents? Are they all also “holding back” documents for nefarious ends?

You’ll notice that people who cook up conspiracy theories about “holding back documents” always falsely pretend that I’m the only one with the documents because acknowledging the truth – that Laura has her own full set and that multiple media outlets around the world each have tens of thousands of different documents – by itself proves how deranged those theories are.

Finally, there are journalists beyond all of those people with whom we’ve worked who have had unrestricted access for long periods of time to the full archive of Snowden documents, including Ryan Gallagher. Have we somehow also manipulated all of them into joining our plot to hold back newsworthy documents and then lie about what’s in the archive?

The number of people around the world who would have to be complicit in these “withholding document” plots would be breathtaking in order for these conspiracies to succeed.

(6) As for “conflict of interest”: I suppose if someone wants to believe that me, Laura, Jeremy, Ryan Gallagher and everyone else working on these documents would find some important NSA story in the archive and then be told that we weren’t allowed to publish it because it conflicts with Pierre’s business interests – and then we’d all just meekly accept these orders and go about our business – there’s really nothing I can say to such a person. How do you prove the negative that you would never tolerate something like that?

Let’s leave aside the absurd notion that Pierre set out to create a media organization in order to empower him to suppress stories – only to then build it from the start around numerous people with long histories and sustained reputations for being independent and even uncontrollable. Beyond that, the very idea that this large group of people with a history of very independent journalism against the largest governmental and corporate entities is suddenly going to be told that they’re “not allowed” to publish a big story because Pierre doesn’t want it published, and we’re all just going to passively and quietly obey, is truly laughable to me, but I concede that I can’t disprove that to you.

By its very nature, disproving accusations like that is impossible, especially before we’ve begun to publish. That’s precisely why innuendo like that (which can neither be proven nor disproven) is the favorite weapon of smear artists in all realms.

Ultimately, think about how irrational one has to be to claim that Edward Snowden risked his life and liberty to come forward with documents that included big and important stories, and then not only would sit silently by while we suppressed them out of deference to Pierre, but would also continue actively working with us. Yet he continues actively working with us on things like the Christmas film which Laura just produced, his reaction to the court ruling two weeks ago which he gave to me, and the distribution of his letter to Brazilians through my partner, David Miranda, who is leading the campaign for asylum. He has also repeatedly, and quite recently, praised the work we’re doing.

Snowden has, on many occasions, spoken out when he had something to say. Rather than listening to people who don’t know the first thing about him purport to speak for his concerns, just go look at what he’s been saying and doing about all of this.

As I’ve long said, my first obligation is to adhere to the agreement I’ve made with my courageous source, and I am extremely content with how he views the work we’re doing with these documents. He is obviously quite content as well, which is rather obviously inconsistent with the innuendo that we’re suppressing important documents he gave to us for nefarious, self-serving purposes at his expense.

(7) If you actually think I’m a person who is willing to let someone tell me what to write or not to write – or that I would hide newsworthy documents from the public because someone with money wants me to – then that just means I was corrupted all along, so nothing is being lost. But then – to make this argument effectively – you’d have to say that not only is this true for me, but the large group of other independent journalists who have already joined First Look and the ones who will in the future.

Those who have spouted this accusatory innuendo (and here, I don’t mean the ones raising concerns in good faith as you’ve done, but the plainly malicious attackers) have pretended that I’m the only one working on these documents with First Look, precisely because demonization campaigns work so much better when focused on only one person. It’s much easier to try to convince people that I personally have been instantly corrupted than it is to try to convince people that not only I, but also Laura Poitras, Jeremy Scahill, Liliana Segura, Micah Lee, etc. etc. all have been as well.

But that’s the case that someone has to make if they want to pursue this accusatory line convincingly. Unless all those other journalists are also corrupted along with me, how can I effectively impose my own corruption on how these stories are reported or suppressed? That’s why the people advancing this attack always deceitfully refer to “Glenn Greenwald’s partnership with Pierre” without mentioning the large number of other journalists who are part of the venture in a similar capacity to me. They try to mislead people into believing that I’m the only one who has joined First Look because that’s the only way their smears can succeed.

Ultimately, in terms of “conflicts of interest”, how is this different from working with any other media outlet? Salon has very rich funders: do you think I suppressed stories that conflicted with their business interests? Democracy Now is funded by lots of rich people: do you think Amy Goodman conceals big stories that would undermine the business interests of her funders?

Every effective advocacy group and media outlet that you might like – the ACLU, EFF, CCR – has rich funders. Independent films – whether it be Laura’s or Jeremy’s Dirty Wars – have rich people funding them, directly or indirectly. Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post: is Bart Gellman now under suspicion that he will start suppressing Amazon stories from the Snowden archive (and if so, how would Bezos prevent others who have these documents from publishing those stories)? And that’s to say nothing of every other big TV outlet and large newspaper and magazine and publishing company with which one might work. There is nothing unique about our new venture in that regard, other than the fact that its non-profit status at least mitigates some of that.

(8) For me, “activism” is about effects and outcomes. Successful activism means successful outcomes, and that in turn takes resources. It’s very easy to maintain a perception of purity by remaining resource-starved and thus unable to really challenge large institutions in a comprehensive and sustained way. I know there are some people on the left who are so suspicious of anyone who is called “billionaire” that they think you’re fully and instantly guilty by virtue of any association with such a person.

That’s fine: there’s no arguing against that view, though I would hope they’d apply it consistently to everyone who takes funding from very rich people or who works with media outlets and organizations funded by rich people – including their friends and other journalists and groups they admire (or even themselves).

But I view it differently: I see resources as a thing needed to be exploited for a successful outcome, to effectively vindicate the political and journalistic values I believe in. And I’ve seen – particularly over the last six months – how vital serious resources are to doing something like this aggressively and without fear, and not allowing institutional constraints to impede what you want to do. At the end of the day, the choice we’re making is to make our form of journalism as potent and effective as it can be.

(9) To answer your question, I absolutely consider myself an independent journalist. In my contract with the new venture  – exactly as I insisted on with Salon and the Guardian – are clauses stating that nobody tells me what to write or not to write about, and that – except where stories may create legal liability for the outlet – I have the right to directly post what I write for my blog to the internet without anyone editing or even seeing it first. As was true at Salon and the Guardian, any news articles I write will be done in conjunction with editors and other journalists, but the level of journalistic independence I enjoy will be at least as much as it’s been for the last seven years.

I am convinced that my independence won’t be impeded by this venture – I believe it will be strengthened – and I believe the same is true of the other journalists who are already building this with us and who will join us in the future. But ultimately, the only actual (i.e. non-speculative) answer to all of that will be found in the journalism we produce. It’s very easy for people to attack now since we haven’t started yet, because the ultimate evidence disproving their accusations – the journalism we do there – can’t yet be cited.

(10) You correctly point out that I’ve long argued that corporate media environments foster a certain form of subservient, neutered journalism, and ask how I am certain that won’t happen to me. Of course I can’t be “certain”, and I think certainty in that regard would be ill-advised. It’s important to recognize that those institutional temptations are powerful if one intends to avoid them.

No human being is intrinsically immune from them: it takes work to maintain your independence and integrity. To announce in advance that I’m “certain” that they won’t affect me would be to embrace a hubris that would probably make failure in that regard more likely. But it’s definitely not impossible: even at the worst large establishment media outlets, there are individual journalists doing good work despite those pressures and influences.

I had these same questions asked of me when I left my own independent blog to go to Salon, and then again when I left Salon to go to the Guardian: won’t you dilute what you say, and won’t you be controlled by their editors and owners, and won’t you have to comport to their orthodoxies? I don’t think anyone can say that my journalism or advocacy changed as I moved from my own blog to Salon and then to the Guardian.

Indeed, the particular concern that some people expressed when I went to the Guardian – that the bitter and protracted feud between the paper’s top editors and WikiLeaks would prevent me from continuing to defend WikiLeaks – was immediately put to the test in my very first month there, which is when Ecuador granted asylum to Julian Assange. I spent large parts of my first month at the Guardian warring with large parts of the British press, including the Guardian, over their irrational and intense contempt for WikiLeaks (see here  as one example). I never hesitated to criticize the Guardian when warranted in other cases  or take strong positions that I knew were vehemently opposed by its editors. The very idea of modulating or changing what I advocate out of deference to the views and interests of a paper’s owners or editors has never even occurred to me, and I’m confident it won’t now.

One reason is that I’m not working there alone, but directly with numerous independent journalists for whom I have the greatest respect and with whom I have the closest working relationships, and I think that will serve as reinforcement for all of us. Another is that we’re all convinced that this entity isn’t being constructed to control or suppress independent journalists but rather to liberate and empower them. Another is that I have a large long-time readership which will be quite vigilant and vocal if I change what I do in any way, big or small. But ultimately, the most important factor is that, while recognizing that nobody is inherently incorruptible, you have to have confidence in what really motivates you, and I do.

Finally, I’m criticized sometimes – and I definitely create some problems for myself – by engaging so much with so many critics, in writing, on Twitter and elsewhere. But the main reason I do that is because it’s a vital accountability check. The attribute I’ve always loved most about online journalism is that it doesn’t permit the top-down, one-way monologue that has long driven establishment journalism – you can’t avoid criticisms, questions, and attacks from readers and others even if you want to – and I don’t want to be one of those journalists who think that the only people worth listening to or engaging with are other established journalists and media elites.

So I have zero doubt that if I did alter the journalism I do or how I do it in response to the environment of this new venture, I would hear that quite loudly and clearly, and that’s how it should be. The interactive model of online journalism has always been both a vital resource and check for me.

Thanks for the email, which provoked some points I’ve been wanting to make for awhile, including some which I recognize extend well beyond the specific concerns you personally raised. As a result, I may publish the exchange, though obviously won’t use your name without your permission –

Glenn Greenwald

________________

 Dear Glenn,

Sincerely,

Colby D. Phillips

______________________

For the past 10 years, I was a litigator in NYC specializing in First Amendment challenges, civil rights cases, and corporate and securities fraud matters. I am the author of the New York Times Best-Selling book, How Would A Patriot Act?, a critique of the Bush administration’s use of executive power, released May, 2006.

 

by DARWIN BOND-GRAHAM

By Sam Amer

The gap between the rich and poor in America is growing wider and is now almost unbridgeable. We need to act to avoid the many negative consequences.

America is believed by the rest of the world to be the land of opportunity and unimpeded upward mobility. It is where people from all walks of life, backgrounds, races and color can make the best of their opportunities and talents. America attracted people from all over the world to achieve, discover, innovate and improve their lives, and this helped create the greatest society ever built by man.

It used to be that in America you could make a future for yourself no matter who your parents were, what your religion or race is. Can you imagine a black president with a Moslem father becoming the elected leader in France, England or Germany?

Unfortunately this is becoming less and less so. Life in America is slowly falling into a type of a new caste system, where your origins, and particularly your family’s fortunes can in large part determine your future. If you were born rich you are likely to remain that way. But, if you were born poor, you and your progeny are likely to remain that way as well. The opportunity to change your caste is becoming less available nowadays. We are slowly turning into a system similar to the landed gentry feudal system in England or to the more structured caste system in India. In a caste system, you are born in a pre-defined caste with no way out. In America the newly developing caste system appears to encompass more than just income inequality, it encompasses inequality in opportunity, in health, in life expectancy, in happiness and in all other aspects of life itself. Robert Reich related the Caste system to the decreasing social mobility in the United States.

Wealth inequality is dividing our one United States into two Americas: one that is rich and in control and one that is poor and helpless. The two Americas exist in increasingly separate spheres and barely know each other. The rich don’t use the same schools, don’t frequent the same restaurants, don’t attend the same social functions, don’t support similar causes, and don’t use the same modes of transportation or shop at the same stores. They live on a higher plane and have an easier and more enjoyable life, different in many ways from the more demanding and stressful lives of most Americans. The rich populate the Congress and other government hierarchies. They write the laws and establish the rules for the rest of us to follow while largely unfamiliar with our lives and the challenges we face. Now, the wealth gap in the United States is the forth highest in the world; only Russia, the Ukraine and Lebanon are worse.

The new American Caste System is self-perpetuating. The children of the rich grow up in better environments. They live, for the most part, in two-parent homes, get better nutrition, and receive better health care and better elementary education. They grow up healthier both physically and psychologically and are, in many ways, better suited for life in today’s society. In addition, the rich can afford to send their children to the better universities, which are now beyond the reach of most high school graduates. Children of the rich will form the bulk of our political and economic leadership. That reality reflects the common dictum: “he who has the gold makes the rules”.

The children of the poor, on the other hand, are usually born to single mothers and end up either uneducated or undereducated. Relatively few of them graduate from the better schools and universities; most end up in the lower echelons of society and repeat the lives of their parents’ steeped in poverty and hopelessness. The chasm between the two groups continues to grow and is now almost unbridgeable.

Many reasons underlie this developing new Caste System in America. The primary reason is the growing wealth inequality, which is being made worse by globalization. During the times of Henry Ford, for example, the rich intended to help the poor economically to stimulate the general economy (and consequently their own their profits). Henry Ford wanted to enable his employees to buy Ford cars. Nowadays, the workers live mainly in China or India or Bangladesh with little or no connection to the owners of the companies where they are enslaved. That underlies the reason why the rich these days appear to have even less empathy towards the poor; they don’t know them and have little, if any, interaction with them. The rich in America don’t want to expand social security, help the poor with health insurance or medical care, support unemployment compensation or increase the minimum wage. Present-day leaders of industry and commerce are more internationalists with no real allegiance to any particular country or to its citizens. They own multiple homes perhaps in New York, Paris or London and own factories in China, India or the Philippines. They couldn’t care less about the workers in those factories. All they care about is making more money for themselves and their heirs.

While the British caste system is based on heritage and the Indian caste system is based more on occupation, history and race, the new American Cast System, is based primarily on wealth. In the future, it will most likely to become more ingrained and be based on heritage as well. In India an untouchable, a member of the lowest caste in India, cannot do anything that raises himself or herself above his or her appointed station in life. The caste system is stamped on an individual as untouchable from birth. His social status is fixed, and his economic condition is permanently set.

Caste systems infuse a sense of inferiority into lower-castes. This traumatizes them and also inhibits the inter-caste discourse and thus prevents the sharing of knowledge. It destroys the ability to create and enjoy the fruits of freedom and degrades the feelings of unity, citizenship and patriotism. In time such a caste system in the United States will inhibit our overall economic viability, entrepreneurial activity, life expectancy, and institutionalize discrimination on basis of wealth. We must act to stop our moving in that direction.

Our politicians are aware of the seriously negative effects of wealth inequality on the health of the United States both economically and socially. In a recent speech, President Obama acknowledged that much. We are waiting to see if he, as always, is just great at giving speeches or is he going to follow-up with some actions. Judging by our past experiences, and in view of his major opposition in Congress, I must say that I am not very hopeful.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Retired Pharmacologist with two masters and a Ph.D.

By Daniel Wirt

The material published on Counterpunch is often commendable, almost always of pressing political value, but sometimes there are outliers and clinkers, and Paul Craig Roberts’ recent piece, The Republic of Denial (1) is a prime example.

In The Republic of Denial, Paul Craig Roberts leaves out consideration of greenhouse gas-induced anthropogenic global warming (AGW) as the proximate cause of the climate disruption and instability described in this rambling piece. Instead, he invokes consideration of common conspiracy theories (DARPA, HAARP, Chemtrails), thoroughly devoid of scientific legitimacy, complete with citations to dodgy internet sites. Perhaps this piece would have been more appropriately titled, “The Republic of Science Denial”. How did this embarrassing nonsense get past the Counterpunch editors? Besides a lapse in attention, the only other explanation I can think of is that The Republic of Denial was edited from the grave by Alexander Cockburn, who was hostile to AGW, viewing it as a ruse to promote nuclear power and Malthusianism (2).

Were he alive, Cockburn’s ideation might be reinforced by recent events, namely the endorsement of nuclear power by prominent climate scientists as a means of mitigating the greenhouse gas-induced hell that is confronting the biosphere. This, however, is just an example of how human beings can be terribly inconsistent and contradictory, brilliant and inspired in one area and deluded and out of touch with reality in another. That inconsistency is on prominent display with Paul Craig Roberts (as it was with Alexander Cockburn — brilliant and inspired in many areas and completely wrong on the most important issue in human history:  AGW and the anthropogenic destruction of the biosphere).

It is tempting to put on blinders and view Mr. Roberts in terms of important single issues, for example, his support for single-payer health care reform, and ignore other facets. However, my glasses will always be colored with the blood of Victor Jara and Charles Horman, because of Mr. Roberts’ overt apologetics for Augusto Pinochet (3, 4, 5 ). And the blood of the victims of Ronald Reagan’s [numerous and ghastly] crimes in Central America, because of Mr. Roberts’ apologetics for Reagan administration policies (6, 7, 8).

The Counterpunch editors are obviously usually paying attention. The editors prefaced a 2012 piece by Paul Craig Roberts on 9/11 with a disclaimer (9). Thankfully the Counterpunch editors are skeptical about that “Fatima of the 21st century, the controlled demolition of the World Trade Towers” (as my friend, the physicist, Dr. Manuel Garcia quips). And in a 2006 piece by Paul Craig Roberts, the Counterpunch editors excised a bit of Pinochet apologetics (10). How is that known? The piece was published simultaneously elsewhere, identical except for the inclusion of the factually deficient 4th paragraph (11).

Scientific illiteracy and ignorance are epidemic in the United States, and the afflicted are vulnerable to whambo conspiracy theories. In the particular case of climate disruption and instability, we don’t need conspiracy theories and non-fact-based ideation as explanations. To a scientific certainty, greenhouse gas-induced anthropogenic global warming is the proximate cause of the rapidly worsening climate disruption and instability.

I realize that the concept of scientific certainty is often opaque for people not trained in scientific methodology. A good place for people to start is skepticalscience.com, where you can read science-based refutations to the 174 most common climate myths of the merchants of doubt and science deniers, in both basic and intermediate versions, and download it all to a smartphone app for handy reference.Remember those dicey, problematic dinner conversations with your visiting relatives this last holiday season?  The Skeptical Science app will likely come in handy next holiday season.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Notes

1) http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/29/the-republic-of-denial/  (Paul Craig Roberts:  The Republic of Denial.  Accessed 01-07-2014)
2) http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/4357#.UswRwijEPFJ  (Alexander Cockburn:  I am an intellectual blasphemer.  Accessed 01-07-2014)

3) http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=6254  (Paul Craig Roberts:  If Pinochet Is Guilty, so Is Bush.  Accessed 01-07-2014)

4) http://www.creators.com/opinion/paul-craig-roberts/pinochet-s-demonization-exemplifies-propaganda-s-power.html  (Paul Craig Roberts:  Pinochet’s Demonization Exemplifies Propaganda’s Power.  Accessed 01-07-2014)

5) http://www.policyofliberty.net/HPdA/RobertsAraujo.html (Chile:  Two Visions, The Allende-Pinochet Era by Karen Araujo and Paul Craig Roberts – Home page of  Hermógenes Pérez de Arce.  Accessed 01-07-2014)

6) http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/07/24/rotten-ronnie/  (Manuel Garcia Jr.:  Rotten Ronnie.  Accessed 01-07-2014)

7) http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/07/23/the-left-reagan-and-cockburn/  (Paul Craig Roberts:  The Left, Reagan and Cockburn.  Accessed 01-07-2014)

8) http://www.markdanner.com/articles/127?class=related_content_link  (Mark Danner:  The Truth of El Mozote.  Accessed 01-07-2014)

9) http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/09/11/the-11th-anniversary–  (Paul Craig Roberts:  The 11th Anniversary of 9/11.  Accessed 01-07-2014)

http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/11/28/debunking-the-myths-of-9-11/  (Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair:  Debunking the Myths of 9/11.  Accessed 01-07-2014)

10) http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/12/30/the-new-dark-age/  (Paul Craig Roberts:  The New Dark Age.  Accessed 01-07-2014)

11) http://antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=10239  (Paul Craig Roberts:  The Disrespect for Truth has Brought a New Dark Age.  Accessed 01-07-2014)

By Nick Barrickman and Barry Grey, wsws.org

Abdulbaki Todashev, the father of slain Boston Marathon bombing witness Ibragim Todashev, released an open letter to President Obama last week pleading for justice and asking the president to ensure that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) not interfere with his investigation into the killing.

In the letter, the elder Todashev accused the FBI of murdering his son in order to prevent him from testifying in court.

Ibragim Todashev, 27, was shot to death at his Orlando, Florida apartment last May by FBI agents who were interrogating him about his ties to Tamerlan Tsarnaev. An ethnic Chechen like Todashev, Tamerlan Tsarnaev is alleged to have carried out the April 15, 2013 Boston Marathon bombings along with his younger brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Three people were killed and another 264 injured in the terrorist bombings.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed by police on April 19. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured and faces a possible death sentence on charges of using weapons of mass destruction and malicious destruction of property resulting in death.

[pullquote]_{[As usual, the filthy and complicit] establishment media have imposed a virtual wall of silence on the extraordinary death of Todashev, which has continued in relation to the open letter to Obama from his father.}[/pullquote]

The death of Ibragim Todashev remains unexplained more than seven months after the event. Initially, it was alleged that Todashev had lunged at officials, wielding a knife, during the interrogation, upon implicating himself and Tamerlan Tsarnaev in a 2011 triple killing in Waltham, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, where the two had been acquainted. Government officials subsequently acknowledged that Todashev had not been armed when he was fatally shot.

Authorities have refused to release the name of the FBI agent who shot and killed the unarmed Todashev at point-blank range, and the FBI has blocked the release of the autopsy report. No charges have been filed and no one has been arrested for what was evidently a state murder.

The establishment media have imposed a virtual wall of silence on the extraordinary death of Todashev, which has continued in relation to the open letter to Obama from his father.

In the letter, Abdulbaki wrote: “My reaching out to you is dictated by the calling of my soul and the unsubsiding pain of the father who has lost his guiltless son to a violent shooting death…

“Did my son know that he had the right to remain silent or did he have rights at all, including the right to live? Being a citizen of another country he might not be aware of the laws as he was only 27 years old and wanted to live so much. No, they left no chances for him, inflicting 13 gunshot wounds and multiple hematomas on his body…

“They did it deliberately so that he can never speak and never take part in court hearings. They put pressure on my son’s friends to prevent them from coming to the court and speaking the truth.”

The letter concluded: “I rely on you, Mr. President, and hope that the prosecutor’s office and the court do not let the agencies conducting internal investigation on this case prevent the truth from coming to light so that at least some part of our grief, caused by the murder of our son, is relieved, and that the murderers stand trial instead of sit in their desk chairs.”

Included with the letter were postmortem photographs of Ibragim Todashev, showing in graphic detail the numerous bullet wounds inflicted to his head and torso.

When asked by reporters about the administration’s plans to respond, National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlyn Hayden said that “[W]e have just received Mr. Todashev’s letter and will be reviewing it to determine the appropriate follow-up.” Hayden referred all further questions to the FBI.

Abdulbaki Todashev initially ventured to the US in the immediate aftermath of his son’s killing with the intention of uncovering the reasons for the death, announcing his own private investigation in August. This was meant to coincide with an investigation being conducted by the FBI. Nothing has come of reported official investigations, with authorities at both the federal and state level repeatedly stonewalling attempts to obtain information.

Instead, authorities have taken to intimidating the family and friends of those associated with Todashev. In October, the former live-in girlfriend of Todashev, Tatiana Gruzdeva, was deported to her native Moldova after she gave an interview to Boston Magazine questioning the FBI’s killing of her fiancée. Another friend of Todashev was taken into custody while being denied access to an attorney.

The murder of Todashev and the subsequent government-media cover-up raise the very real possibility that the young man was killed because he was in a position to reveal facts about Tamerlan Tsarnaev that would be highly embarrassing to the US government and various intelligence and police agencies. Todashev may have had information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s links to Islamist separatist terrorists in the Russian Caucasus as well as his relations with the FBI and other US state agencies.

No explanation has been given for the fact that the FBI and CIA had warnings, well in advance of the Boston bombings, of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s radical Islamist leanings, having been alerted by Russian authorities in 2011 as well as, according to some reports, by Saudi officials. The FBI says it conducted an investigation of Tsarnaev, questioning him and other family members, and gave him a clean bill of health.

The elder Tsarnaev brother was taken off a federal watch list in 2012 and permitted to travel to Dagestan, neighboring Chechnya, where he reportedly established links to radical Islamist separatist movements. The Tsarnaev family maintained links to Chechen rebels and the US government through the Congress of Chechen International Organizations, set up by Ruslan Tsarni, the uncle of Tamerlan and Dhzokhar. That outfit was run from the suburban Washington DC home of Graham Fuller, former vice-chairman of the US National Security Council. (See: “Who is Ruslan Tsarni”).

Last May, the Boston police commissioner and a top Massachusetts Homeland Security official told a congressional panel that local and state police were never informed by the FBI or the federal Homeland Security Department, in advance of the Boston Marathon, an international event that draws tens of thousands of people to downtown Boston, of warnings about Tamerlan Tsarnaev or the investigation carried out by the FBI. This was despite the presence of state and local police officials on a joint terrorism task force for the region that included the FBI, Homeland Security and other federal agencies.

The Boston Marathon bombings were seized upon by the federal government to impose an unprecedented lockdown of Boston and its environs, during which the streets were occupied by heavily armed troops and police and patrolled by machine gun-mounted armored vehicles, while military helicopters flew overhead. Residents were ordered to say indoors and warrantless house-to-house police searches were conducted throughout entire neighborhoods.

The terror attack, carried out by people who had been closely monitored by the FBI and were known to the CIA, became the occasion for imposing de facto martial law and testing out plans previously drawn up to impose dictatorial control over major American cities.

The authors also recommend:

The state killing of Ibragim Todashev
[3 June 2013]