USA vs. Brasil

The Daily Banter: Brazil To Declare War on U.S. (or Today's Glenn Greenwald Fever Dream)/9.24.13

Quote of the Day, Jr.

"You're going to have to wait along with everybody else. I will say that there are vast programs, both domestic and international spying, that the world will be shocked to learn about, that the NSA is engaged in with no democratic accountability and that's what driving our reporting."

-- Glenn Greenwald to Fox News's Eric Bolling today

A tease. A tease, you fucking hack.

I swear, I'm going to deck the next person who tells me that Glenn Greenwald is a serious journalist and not a narcissistic child who's strictly doing this for the shot of pure adrenaline into the heart of his sense of self-importance it's giving him. First of all, Greenwald talks to a racist piece of crap like Eric Bolling as if he's someone whose views are worth taking seriously -- then he drops back to coy-little-girl mode just as Bolling decides can't take it anymore and needs to show his appreciation and excitement by basically pulling his dong out and stroking it for him.

Jesus, Greenwald's a joke.

Snowden Blower

Well, this is pretty much the most insane thing you'll see today: a five-minute film apparently thrown together quickly by a couple of Hong Kong filmmakers detailing the events that made Edward Snowden into, well, whatever he is these days. It's already received upwards of 100-thousand hits on YouTube with the comments on it, as you can imagine, ranging from thoughtful to barely legible due to what has to be the problem of trying to keep the tin-foil hat from falling over your face while you're typing.

The acting is laughable -- with an American-born English teacher living in Hong Kong stepping up to play Snowden -- and the overbearing soundtrack music sounds like Hans Zimmer being beaten to death with a foghorn. Since this isn't Michael Bay, Paul Greengrass or even John Woo we're talking about here, it doesn't end with a lot of action -- just an audio clip from the actual first interview Snowden gave to Glenn Greenwald, back before we knew for sure that he was a staggeringly naive political nihilist destined to collapse under the weight of his own relentless sense of self-importance.

The movie is called Verax.

If you can figure out why it exists, please let me know.

Quote of the Day

"I did hear another story, not from Greenwald himself, about the Guardian writer's life in Brazil. The Out profile of him mentioned the pack of stray dogs that Greenwald had adopted. But it skipped over the boys — mainly friends of his partner David Michael Miranda — who sleep over and play videogames at the house. That would have given too much ammunition to Greenwald's conservative critics."

-- Gawker Publisher Nick Denton on Glenn Greenwald

I'm really not sure what the hell to make of this. There's a story in today's New York Daily News that digs pretty deeply into Greenwald's life and finds that he used to be involved in the business side of a gay porn company and that he continues to have all kinds of problems with the IRS, including tens of thousands of dollars in outstanding debt, but I honestly don't care about that. As Greenwald essentially says, everybody's got their trouble. It is entertaining to get further confirmation that he's a pissy, demanding little pain-in-the-ass who lives for unnecessary melodrama and who thinks his shit doesn't stink -- also that he considers ancient history to be about ten years ago -- but for the most part the Daily News revelations are meaningless.

Now Denton's insinuation, on the other hand, seems pretty nasty. But the above quote is really all he says about it aside from saying that he met Greenwald in Rio 18 months ago, which means, I assume, that he's claiming to know about Greenwald and videogame-paying boys from some kind of personal experience, either with Greenwald himself or someone close to him. Denton threw the link to Gawker's story on the Greenwald report up on Twitter just a little while ago with this headline: "Finally, an excuse to share my Glenn Greenwald gossip."

It's a pretty damning charge to make, even as subtle innuendo. I hope Denton's got something to back this kind of thing up seeing as how vindictively sue-happy Greenwald has proven himself to be over the years.

This is one of those cases, though, where whoever loses, we win.

Quote of the Day

"Greenwald has not yet made a public evaluation of whether or not he agrees that he made that mistake. He owes it to us to do so, with as much speed as practicably possible. It’s not too much to say that the fate of his broader NSA project might hinge on doing so effectively—because the powers that be will find it very easy to seize on this one error to discredit his every NSA revelation, even the ones he nailed dead to rights... Such distraction campaigns are how power does its dirtiest work. Think of the way the questions about the authenticity of the 'Killian documents' were able to obscure the fact that George W. Bush actually did go AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard or how the unrelated or how the unrelated killing of a CIA station chief in Greece was used to discredit the congressional investigations of CIA wrongdoing in 1975—cases with which Greenwald should be well-familiar. So, Glenn Greenwald, what’s the word? The fate of our civil liberties may depend on it."

-- The Nation's Rick Perlstein on questions being raised about Glenn Greenwald's dubious reporting on the PRISM program and the NSA's data-mining in general, including an apparent mistake that Perlstein is calling Greenwald's "epic botch"

Meanwhile, over at Mother Jones, Kevin Drum has some questions of his own about Edward Snowden. What's interesting is that Drum links back to Andrew Sullivan, who links to the guy who's turning out to be Patient Zero in the push-back against Greenwald and Snowden's claims, the guy who first started asking very serious questions and demanding that Greenwald clarify his claims: Bob Cesca. These people are basically quoting Cesca and the stuff he's been writing for the Daily Banter all week, word-for-word.

A big standing-O for Bob today, my friends. He's doing a yeoman's job.