Apr 23 2013

The Boston terror attack, and the selective empathy of Glenn Greenwald

This is a cross post by Marcus Brutus at Harry’s Place

Reactions to massacres reveal almost as much as much about the human dark side as mass slaughter itself.

The days of a media filled with respectful mourning died with the birth of the internet which gave a voice to anyone with an opinion. Now an atrocity sparks cretin cavalcades and concocted conspiracy theories before the bodies are even in the morgue.

Glenn Greenwald depicts himself as being so emphatic that he would qualify for the x-men if they were real instead of fictional, like his work. He invents himself as a humanitarian who values all life equally.

John-Paul Pagano documented how Greenwald insulted the Boston bombing victims: “8 year-old Martin Richard was blown to bits today. Glenn Greenwald sneers from Brazil: ‘I don’t wet my pants & beg to give up my rights…’”

Three people dead, others maimed and Greenwald makes it out to be all about him and how he is tougher than a dead child. The part about “giving up rights” is central in the narratives of Boston bomber troofers.

Pagano rightfully describes the article vivisected below as: “Glenn Greenwald shows up at every atrocity against the US and demands that we detour our sympathy. In this he is like the Westboro fanatics.”

He is obviously exploiting murdered fellow citizens for political gain because he does not hold all life as equally sacred. On twitter he refused to condemn the Assad dictatorship, then lashed out with ad hominem attacks (“morally worthless”, “moral cretin”) and hid behind a Chomsky quote which says Americans should only criticize their own country since they only have voting rights there. It would have been more convincing if the exchange hadn’t taken place after he wrote anti-Israel screeds; according to one Lebanon Now writer, Greenwald “failed the Orwell test.”

Greenwald has attacked Canada as a land of “creeping tyranny” and libeled Sweden as an oppressive state when he was hard at work deifying Assange. He doesn’t have voting rights in either of those great countries.

Greenwald’s article on the Boston bombings opens with accusations of “selective empathy.” If you listen carefully you can hear Syrians laughing. Greenwald agreed with a libel that the president could “rape a nun” and get away with it, which shows a lack of empathy for rape victims whose pain the smear trivializes.

He describes the bombings as “exactly the kinds of horrific, civilian-slaughtering attacks that the US has been bringing to countries in the Muslim world over and over and over again for the last decade.” This is inaccurate since the US takes unprecedented efforts to minimize civilian casualties [while] the [Boston] attack was designed to maximize civilian deaths.

He cites a Gary Younge tweet asking us to declare ourselves “all Pakistanis.” Pakistan shares responsible in part for Taliban atrocities since 1994, gives tacit approval to anti-Shia terrorism and has a population that rallies in support of the death of Asia Bibi (that’s Pakistani empathy for you). Kamila Shamsie described in Greenwald’s own paper how there is “no solidarity” or empathy for Hazaras in Pakistan. Anti-drone activists ignore that the PAF is the chief cause of civilian death in the tribal region. Then along comes Gary Young to shame us for failing to follow Pakistan’s noble record.

Younge and Greenwald are using the same stratagem of trying to dispel American deaths by pointing to irrelevant violence. There’s no reason to do something that illogical unless you’re biased and seek to dismiss civilian death in a state you loathe. Greenwald did not apply similar arguments to his favored causes when Israel launched operation Pillar of Defense; his condemnation bordered on hysteria. He didn’t try to divert attention away from Israeli actions to atrocities committed by the Palestinians and their allies.

As a friend of mine wrote:

“online commenters who respond to the Boston attacks with ‘What about the dead in Iraq/Syria…?’ etc betray their own belief that innocent American lives are not worth even a few moments’ grief and outrage.”

Greenwald mentions Juan Cole’s “similar point about violence elsewhere. Indeed, just yesterday in Iraq, at least 42 people were killed and more than 250 injured by a series of car bombs, the enduring result of the US invasion and destruction of that country.” He doesn’t provide any evidence for the idea that Iraqi sectarianism that long predated 2003 was caused by the US. The dishonesty is unsurprising since car bombings claiming massive deaths that aren’t aimed at Western targets disproves narratives about terrorism as “blowback” or some response to “imperialism.”

In one of his articles Greenwald cited a David Frum post, which stated that the majority of civilian deaths were caused by insurgents. Ranj Alaadin explains that people should “blame Iraq, not America, for sectarian civil war. Iraqi society is as polarised as ever. The ongoing battles over its future shape show that the country’s divisions long pre-dated the Western invasion of a decade ago.”

He bemoans “the deep compassion and anger felt in the US when it is attacked never translates to understanding the effects of our own aggression against others.” However, Greenwald’s record on “compassion” is nonexistent; he displayed cold-blooded callousness to Malian suffering under jihadis. In his article he defended jihadi atrocities by arguing that rebel “”amputations, flogging, and stonings” were canceled out by the actions of “Malian government forces.” In a twitter argument he dismissed the fact that nearly all Malians support the intervention as irrelevant “local concerns” and stated he would still oppose the intervention no matter what Malians want. He presented the intervention as a “war against Islam.”

He claims that [US] drones are “targeting” rescuers. However, CIF Watch disproved that charge. If the US was morally equivalent or worse than the Boston bomber he wouldn’t have a need for that. Greenwald’s source is “discredited” and provides “no evidence” for the charge of attacking mourners. The source can actually be used against Glenn since it states that the Taliban sections off sites where drone strikes took place and do not allow civilians to enter.

Greenwood continues:

“There’s nothing wrong per se with paying more attention to tragedy and violence that happens relatively nearby and in familiar places. Whether wrong or not, it’s probably human nature, or at least human instinct, to do that, and that happens all over the world.”

So by his own admission the strawman he’s railing against isn’t wrong if it was true. Then the guy who displayed less empathy than Hezbollah over the Burgas massacre lectures people on empathy for over a paragraph. Do Guardian readers have any self-respect?

He displays a poor memory by asking readers to recall “that on the day of the 2011 Oslo massacre by a right-wing, Muslim-hating extremist, The New York Times spent virtually the entire day strongly suggesting in its headlines that an Islamic extremist group was responsible, a claim other major news outlets (including the BBC and Washington Post) then repeated as fact.”

However, people repeated it as fact because a jihadi group took responsibility for it; apparently reporting that now proves bigotry. Greenwald reported the exact same thing and took longer to correct himself than the outlets he attacks for doing the same as he did. Greenwald [actually] justified the Oslo attacks when he thought Islamists were responsible. He argued that Norway prompt[ed]” (defined as to “cause or bring about”) the attack. The fact that he [rationalized] the slaughter of children when he thought jihadis were to blame and then condemned it as a horrible tragedy when it became clear it was something he could use shows that he is devoid of empathy.

He complains that “when the perpetrators of notorious crimes turned out to be African-American, the entire community usually paid a collective price.” So says the man who libeled neo-nazi’s victims (which included a black pastor) out of court as “odious and repugnant” and explained that his contempt for them motivated him to defend his client. Who wouldn’t want to be lectured on empathy by him?

Greenwald has even defended former Congressman Ron Paul, who [opposes the 1964] civil rights act, by characterizing Paul’s critics as Stalinists!

Glenn Greenwald condemns the word ‘terrorism’ as racially-loaded (cifwatch.com)
Benghazi to Boston: Glenn Greenwald’s hypocrisy in condemning ‘rush to judgement’ over marathon attack (cifwatch.com)
Glenn Greenwald’s baseless charge of ‘Islamophobia’ against Jane Harman (cifwatch.com)
Glenn Greenwald tosses a throwaway line about the injurious effects of Judaism (cifwatch.com)
Glenn Greenwald’s dishonesty on the rights of women and gays in the Mid-East (cifwatch.com)

Feb 21 2013

Guardian reports on UK terror plot ignore facts regarding potential Jewish targets

A Guardian report on Feb. 21, Three would-be suicide bombers found guilty of terror plot, by Sandra Laville, the paper’s crime correspondent, began thus:

Three would-be suicide bombers have been convicted of plotting to carry out terror attacks in the UK which would have been more deadly than the 7/7 bombings in 2005.

The three men, Irfan Naseer, Irfan Khalid and Ashik Ali, Laville explained, were key figures in a Birmingham-based terror cell which planned to detonate multiple suicide bombs which, according to prosecutors, could have caused “death and injury on a scale greater than the 7/7 bombings”.

Irfan Naseer, Irfan Khalid and Ashik Ali

All of the three convicted men had ued online material from Inspire, “a self-help guide produced by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)”, while two of the men had visited Al Qaeda training camps in North Waziristan.

Laville actually published three separate reports (and over 3000 words) on Feb. 21 at the Guardian on the terror plot, but one piece of information wasn’t available: any details on the targets the three had selected.

Here’s what Laville wrote in one of her reports:

Although no target was ever discussed, their ambition was to outdo the bombers from the 7 July 2005 attacks in London. Naseer told his associates the plan was for “seven or eight [bombs] in different places with timers on at the same time, boom, boom, boom”

Interestingly, however, as the CST and other media, including the Telegraph, reported today, the three had indeed mentioned Jewish institutions as one of their possible targets.

Tom Whitehead, the Teleraph’s Security Editor, noted, in a Feb. 21 report, that the British jury in the terror case heard how Naseer justified attacking non-believers because they “act like animals”. Whitehead added the following:

Conversations between them and others were secretly recorded by the police.

…

In one Naseer…talks about other methods of killing people he was taught about while allegedly undergoing terror training in Pakistan.

He said: “Make it and put it inside like, you know like Vaseline or cream like that, like Nivea cream and put it on people’s cars.

“You know like the door handles on a whole, imagine putting it on whole like area innit overnight and when they come in the morning to work they start touching the, they open the door and then five minutes they die man, all of them start dying and that, kill about 1,000 people.”

He added: “Even if we can’t make a bomb, get guns yeah from the black geezers, Africans and charge in some like synagogue or charge in different places.”

The CST noted that this latest terror conviction represents the third recent case in which Islamist terrorists have targeted British Jews.

The Guardian’s curious omission is not insignificant, as the targeting of Jews worldwide is clearly part of Al Qaeda’s strategy.

A cache of evidence found on the body of slain Al Qaeda terrorist Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, killed by Somalian forces in 2011, noted the need to inspire young Muslims to initiate attacks against Jews in the UK, and included one document with the following instructions:

“Our objectives are to strike London with low-cost operations that would cause a heavy blow amongst the hierarchy and Jewish communities.”

The document also outlined specific plans to attack the Stamford Hill and Golders Green neighborhoods in London, areas in which, the terror group chillingly noted, “tens of thousands of Jews” are “crammed in a small area.”

It’s curious, to say the least, that the Guardian reporter covering the terror plot, by self-radicalized Brits intent on causing mass casualties in the UK, evidently didn’t find it of interest to note that one particular often-targeted religious community was again singled out by the Jihadists for murder.

UK court finds 3 guilty in ‘spectacular’ plot aimed at synagogue (timesofisrael.com)

Oct 8 2012

The Guardian, Muslim rioting and ‘Cause & Effect’.

An official Guardian editorial on Oct. 1, ‘In praise of the political cartoon‘, commended the Egyptian newspaper Al Watan for “publishing… pictures with the message that the west misunderstands Islam“, which the editorial contrasted with “Charlie Hebdo‘s senselessly inflammatory caricatures of the prophet Muhammad.”

Charlie Hebdo is a French satirical magazine which printed a set of cartoons on Sept. 19 featuring Muhammad which included more than one depicting him naked.

The magazine’s editor, Stephane Charbonnier, explained that they were “using its freedom of expression to comment on the news in a satirical way.” The news he’s referring to is rioting by Muslims throughout the world, beginning in mid-September, in response to the low-budget anti-Islam film ‘I nnocence of Muslims‘.

In addition to praising the Egyptian cartoons, about the West’s apparent misunderstanding of Islam, the Guardian editorial contrasted such attempts at greater understanding with “…Charlie Hebdo‘s caricatures which, “produced a week of protest, embassy closure, legal complaint and, most gravely, 19 dead [and 160 injured] in Pakistan.”

What the Guardian is referring to is violent rioting, on Sept. 19, in Pakistan’s largest cities – on a day of government-sanctioned protests over the film and cartoon. According to a New York Times report on the violence, most of the deaths occurred in Karachi, where “protesters burned effigies, stoned a KFC and engaged in armed clashes with the police that left 14 people dead and more than 80 wounded by evening.”

Regardless of the details of the deaths, however, to claim that the Hebdo cartoon – of a man who Muslims believe was a messenger and prophet of God – “produced” the Pakistani deaths is absurd.

The editors of a French satirical magazine do not have blood on their hands.

Citizens of Pakistan, Israel, America, or adults of any faith in any other nation in the world who possess moral agency, can freely chose to engage in senseless rioting over a religious or political insult - thus risking death or injury – or they can choose not to.

Is such an intuitive understanding of ’cause and effect’, and individual moral responsibility, even debatable?

Blurred reality: What a Guardian photo of Muslim protest signs fails to focus upon (cifwatch.com)

Dec 30 2010

The surrender of Joseph Harker

It would be tempting to accuse the Guardian’s assistant comments editor, Joseph Harker, of lacking the fortitude necessary to resist a radical ideology which openly seeks the West’s destruction, but the facts don’t really support such an attack.

The reason I couldn’t, in good faith, make such an accusation against Mr. Harker, based on his CiF column “Beware of the bearded white man“, is because to accuse him of surrendering to such reactionary forces would imply that he comprehended the threats posed by radical Islam and simply didn’t possess the strength to resist.

However, you can’t accuse someone of giving in to an enemy he or she doesn’t believe exists in the first place.

Harker’s piece, brimming with ugly racial undertones, mocks the efforts by British law enforcement to combat the myriad of active terrorist threats by Islamist cells operating within their borders, and vilifies those who expect moderate Muslims to denounce and distance themselves from such extremism practiced in their name.

Harker says:

Since I heard the news last week I’ve been terrified. Could it be him? Could it be her? Every time I get on the train or bus. Every time I go into a shop. There they are. Looking so ordinary – but are they about to blow themselves up, taking all us innocent passersby with them?

Yes, since the news emerged that two white British al-Qaida members had been killed in a US drone attack, I can’t help wondering if all white people are potential terrorists. I’m sure only a small minority are actively signed up to the jihadists; but what about the others? Are they sympathisers?…That young white man opposite me with the rucksack: what’s in there? Please, don’t make any sudden movements….Some look blatantly sinister, especially those with beards. The others: well, you just don’t know if they’re simply trying to blend in.

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