7 ms·

I think Glenn Greenwald was stressed into a place where he just kind of cracked, such as by governments actually hounding him. I have listened to his recent int

I think Glenn Greenwald was stressed into a place where he just kind of cracked, such as by governments actually hounding him. I have listened to his recent interviews and I think he's gone into classical conspiracy theories involving the CIA, FBI, NSA, etc. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/18/glenn-greenwald-guardian-partner-detained-heathrow https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/18/glenn-greenwal... https://www.ifj.org/media-centre/news/detail/category/press-releases/article/brazil-government-threatens-and-harasses-journalist-glenn-greenwald.html https://www.ifj.org/media-centre/news/detail/category/press-...

colordrops 5y ago
Could you cite a particular unfounded "conspiracy theory" that he is espousing? Most of the things he's written about the CIA, FBI, NSA etc that I've read are grounded in fact and sourced.. Are you suggesting that these three letter agencies aren't constantly involved in shady unethical often law-breaking activity? Have you not been reading hacker news at all? They make it to the front page regularly with their poor behavior.
- watwut 5y ago
  Bioweapons laboratories in Ukraine.
  - gkaly 5y ago
    Greenwald (and Tulsi Gabbard) quoted Nuland directly, who admitted that there were biological research labs. Greenwald had previously worked on the Anthrax story of 2001, where a couple of high profile people got sent a sophisticated Anthrax variant in the mail. It was supposed to be foreign terrorism at first, later it was found that the strain came from a U.S. research facility. Biological weapons aren't allowed by treaty. Research how to combat biological weapons however is allowed. So many countries produce strains in biological research facilities under the guise of defense. That is precisely Greenwald's point, he has never claimed that bioweapons are manufactured in Ukraine. He has claimed that dangerous biological agents might be present, like they were in the U.S. in 2001. It takes a lot of history and reading to understand Greenwald. The man is a walking encyclopedia, very careful in his statements and touches issues of great complexity. One can rarely refute him in a one liner.
    - watwut 5y ago
      > admitted that there were biological research labs Which is fairly normal thing to have in a developed country. And is much different thing the bioweapons lab. This muddying things does not make Greenwald's sound better. It makes him exactly what he is - someone building conspiracy theory.
      - gkaly 5y ago
        [dead]
        watwut 5y ago
        The jump from "bioresearch lab" which to bioweapons. Making it sound as if there was something to "admit" in Ukraine having same labs as everyone has. Then you try to confuse it with bioweapons, anthrax attacks in America and completely irrelevant treaties about bioweapons. If he wanted to make historical point about Antrax, he did not had to make it in context of Ukraine. If he wanted to make point about bioresearch labs in general, he could have made that one. He did not wanted to do either. He wanted to muddy waters precisedly at the time when is sounded like Ukraine has bioweapons precisedly when they were invaded.
        mistermann 5y ago
        > The jump from "bioresearch lab" which to bioweapons. Making it sound as if there was something to "admit" in Ukraine having same labs as everyone has. Then you try to confuse it with bioweapons, anthrax attacks in America and completely irrelevant treaties about bioweapons. Who is it that's actually doing the confusing here? It's certainly possible that Greenwald is dog-whistling "bioresearch lab" into "bioweapons", but is he actually doing that, and to a large degree (mostly, etc)? Consider this: within your mind, might there be a bias toward perceiving that this is what he is doing, and might it be also possible that you may not be able to perceive that this is happening (due to the evolved nature of the human mind)? Let's try to simultaneously operate in a dual state of mind: both abstract (keeping in mind the phenomena discussed in the article, and taking it seriously) and object level (discussion of "these bio labs"[1]): is it possible that some of the things discussed in the article could happen to us folks here on HN, sometimes? To be clear, I am not asserting as a fact that this is happening here, in a big way - rather, I am merely and explicitly offering it as a suggestion of what might be happening, at least to some degree. [1] I put "these bio labs" in brackets because technically, at the cognitive/neuroscientific level, that is not what either person is actually discussing - rather, each person is necessarily discussing their model of "these bio labs". However, while this is architecturally unavoidable, this is not to say that there is no way to optimize the manner in which we perceive and discuss our respective virtual realities.

colordrops 5y ago

Could you cite a particular unfounded "conspiracy theory" that he is espousing? Most of the things he's written about the CIA, FBI, NSA etc that I've read are grounded in fact and sourced.. Are you suggesting that these three letter agencies aren't constantly involved in shady unethical often law-breaking activity? Have you not been reading hacker news at all? They make it to the front page regularly with their poor behavior.

watwut 5y ago
Bioweapons laboratories in Ukraine.
- gkaly 5y ago
  Greenwald (and Tulsi Gabbard) quoted Nuland directly, who admitted that there were biological research labs. Greenwald had previously worked on the Anthrax story of 2001, where a couple of high profile people got sent a sophisticated Anthrax variant in the mail. It was supposed to be foreign terrorism at first, later it was found that the strain came from a U.S. research facility. Biological weapons aren't allowed by treaty. Research how to combat biological weapons however is allowed. So many countries produce strains in biological research facilities under the guise of defense. That is precisely Greenwald's point, he has never claimed that bioweapons are manufactured in Ukraine. He has claimed that dangerous biological agents might be present, like they were in the U.S. in 2001. It takes a lot of history and reading to understand Greenwald. The man is a walking encyclopedia, very careful in his statements and touches issues of great complexity. One can rarely refute him in a one liner.
  - watwut 5y ago
    > admitted that there were biological research labs Which is fairly normal thing to have in a developed country. And is much different thing the bioweapons lab. This muddying things does not make Greenwald's sound better. It makes him exactly what he is - someone building conspiracy theory.
    - gkaly 5y ago
      [dead]
      - watwut 5y ago
        The jump from "bioresearch lab" which to bioweapons. Making it sound as if there was something to "admit" in Ukraine having same labs as everyone has. Then you try to confuse it with bioweapons, anthrax attacks in America and completely irrelevant treaties about bioweapons. If he wanted to make historical point about Antrax, he did not had to make it in context of Ukraine. If he wanted to make point about bioresearch labs in general, he could have made that one. He did not wanted to do either. He wanted to muddy waters precisedly at the time when is sounded like Ukraine has bioweapons precisedly when they were invaded.
        mistermann 5y ago
        > The jump from "bioresearch lab" which to bioweapons. Making it sound as if there was something to "admit" in Ukraine having same labs as everyone has. Then you try to confuse it with bioweapons, anthrax attacks in America and completely irrelevant treaties about bioweapons. Who is it that's actually doing the confusing here? It's certainly possible that Greenwald is dog-whistling "bioresearch lab" into "bioweapons", but is he actually doing that, and to a large degree (mostly, etc)? Consider this: within your mind, might there be a bias toward perceiving that this is what he is doing, and might it be also possible that you may not be able to perceive that this is happening (due to the evolved nature of the human mind)? Let's try to simultaneously operate in a dual state of mind: both abstract (keeping in mind the phenomena discussed in the article, and taking it seriously) and object level (discussion of "these bio labs"[1]): is it possible that some of the things discussed in the article could happen to us folks here on HN, sometimes? To be clear, I am not asserting as a fact that this is happening here, in a big way - rather, I am merely and explicitly offering it as a suggestion of what might be happening, at least to some degree. [1] I put "these bio labs" in brackets because technically, at the cognitive/neuroscientific level, that is not what either person is actually discussing - rather, each person is necessarily discussing their model of "these bio labs". However, while this is architecturally unavoidable, this is not to say that there is no way to optimize the manner in which we perceive and discuss our respective virtual realities.